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A Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Valéry
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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London: R. Cobden-Sanderson, 1924. Pp. 51; Introduction, 7-15.
We are so accustomed, in considering contemporary English poetry, to identify tradition with lack of invention, and on the other hand originality with oddity; our poetry is of such various and incompatible inheritances – English, Irish, and American – that it is impossible for us to point to the work of any one poet as representing our time, or even as representing one living generation. If we assign the place of honour to Mr. Yeats – and there is certainly none other whose accomplishment and influence entitle him to that position – we must qualify our respect by the admission that an Irish poet can only be accepted with qualifications, by English disciples. It is difficult for us, naturally wasteful, to understand the economy of French literature; to understand that the unity and uniformity of the French mind is such that what appear traditional or revolutionary are only movements within one tradition; and that therefore one poet can be approved by all parties, as uniting the innovations made by an adventurous generation with the traditional merits of French classical poetry. Undoubtedly, Valéry does not represent the most “advanced” experimentation of French verse: that experimentation will be reintegrated into the tradition by a later generation: what Valéry represents, and for which he is honoured and admired by even the youngest in France, is the reintegration of the symbolist movement into the great tradition.
Valéry is the heir, so to speak, of the experimental work of the last generation: he is its completion and its explanation. And in saying this, I am not derogating to the extent of one syllable from his originality: those who have worked in verse know that poetry like that of Paul Valéry is as original and as necessary as any other.
may be compared with any part of Valéry’s beautiful “Cantique des Colonnes”:
The indefinable difference is the difference between the fluid and the static: between that which is moving toward an end and that which knows its end and has reached it; which can afford to stand, changeless, like a statue. There are two considerations about
To Rimbaud, to Verlaine, and to Gérard de Nerval, the relationship in the “Cantique des Colonnes” is evident. Valéry’s kinship with Mallarmé is too evident to need mention – in particular it is manifest in “Les Grenades” and in an early draft of “Narcisse.”
There are other lines in