Abstract
Valéry'sschema of the two mountains presupposes a hierarchy between works, according to the degree of exigency they carry. From this stems an essential problem : how do we know what type of aesthetic requirement is carried by a work ? What are the formal criteria that enable us to differentiate them from one another ? These are the subjects of his Cours de poétique. These questions were posed at a time of crisis for European culture.
In his lesson ofJune19 1942, well before Bourdieu formulated the concept of " capital culturel ", Valéry spoke ofEurope's" capital intellectuel ", the crisis of which he had sensed with particularly precocious acuity : in addition to the Second World War, he mentioned the emergence of Asian countries, and globalization leading to the disappearance of local cultures. He therefore sought to understand what universal criteria might be used to evaluate works of art.
His thinking was based on the opposition between emotion and immediacy, on the one hand, and education and training, on the other. In his view, demanding literature would enable us to gain in " finesse ", and in delicacy, as opposed to many productions of the modern world, which offer strong, coarse and easy emotions, such as cinema. As a result, the finest works are those that require the most effort. For Valéry, Mallarmé's works represented the pinnacle of this hierarchy. So, to evaluate a work of art, we need to imagine the effort made by the person who receives it.
We can therefore distinguish three criteria for evaluating works :
1) complexity, emphasized by philosopher Arthur Danto : the parts of the work are interdependent ;
2) originality, a criterion favored by the Russian formalists : the work opposes formal and thematic stereotypes, and defamiliarizes ;
3) finesse, delicacy, economy of means : a typically Valéryian criterion.
