Collected Verse

'The wind is rising!... Let us try to live!'

One of the preeminent intellectuals of modern French culture, Valéry is widely considered one of the country's greatest poets of the twentieth century. Following a flurry of sonnets in his late teens, he abruptly abandoned verse for twenty years. If the publication of The Young Fate in 1917 won him immediate and immense acclaim, his status as the outstanding poet of the era was firmly consolidated with the Album of Early Verse and Charms with its beautiful meditation on mortality, 'The Graveyard by the Sea', considered one of the finest poems in French. A classical voice in an era of avant-garde modernism, Valéry's often sensuous work was inspired by mysticism, myth, the Mediterranean, and above all passionate love. This bilingual edition brings together for the first time the complete verse with many unknown and previously unpublished poems taken from his abundant correspondence, which offers intimate insight into a private side of the writer.

Paul Valéry

Paul Ryan is author of Paul Valéry sous le signe de l'art et des artistes (2019) and Paul Valéry et le dessin (2007) prefaced by Martine Rouart, Valéry's granddaughter. He has been a member of the Valéry group of the ITEM (CNRS-École Normale Supérieure) for over twenty years and with whom he published six volumes of the series Paul Valéry Cahiers 1894-1914. He also worked as a translator of the series Paul Valéry Notebooks and participated in the digitization of the Cahiers with the Sorbonne University. He is currently editing the correspondence of Paul Valéry and his wife Jeannie for publication by Gallimard.

IntroductionNotes on the Text and TranslationSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Paul ValéryEarly Poems 1887-1892The Young Fate / La Jeune ParqueAlbum of Early VerseCharmsTwelve PoemsLater Occasional VerseQuatrains and Dedications of all PeriodsExplanatory NotesIndex of TitlesIndex of First Lines