Reading Paul Valéry

The most recently acknowledged--and the most private--of the masters of modernity, Paul Valery is perhaps the most radical and wide-ranging. He navigates freely within the mental galaxies known to scientists, poets, literary theorists, musicians, philosophers, historians and social anthropologists, always concerned with exploring the potential and limits of the human mind. This volume of essays by internationally recognized scholars offers the first comprehensive account in English or French of Valery's work. It brings into focus the deeper coherence that animates what Valery called his "unitary mind in a thousand pieces," and offers new perspectives on the immense range of his experimental and fragmentary writings.