Reading Paul Valéry: Universe in Mind

Paul Valèry's work is a unique odyssey in the universe of ideas and mental forms. The most recently acknowledged - and the most private - of the masters of modernity, Valèry is perhaps the most radical and wide-ranging. He navigates freely within the mental galaxies known to scientists, poets, literary theorists, musicians, philosophers, historicans and social anthropologists, always concerned to explore the potential and limits of the human mind. The present volume of essays by internationally recognised scholars offers the first comprehensive account of Valèry's work in English or French. It provides a series of readings bringing into focus the deeper coherence that animates what Valèry called his 'unitary mind in a thousand pieces', and offers new perspectives on the immense range of his experimental and fragmentary writings. This book moves forward the frontiers of our understanding of Valèry's work, and substantially alters the way in which he is perceived.