7 - ‘Esprit, Attente pure, éternel suspens …’: Valéry's prose poetry

Summary

When Valéry came to classify his Cahiers into different thematic chapters, he devoted one to ‘Poèmes et PPA’, or ‘Petits poèmes abstraits’, with the sub-heading ‘Impressions — Sensibilia — Fragments / Ciels — Mers / Attitudes, croquis et Ciels-mer’. One might imagine from this description a writer's loose ends or occasional ‘sketches’, rather than what they are, the startlingly original, high-voltage prose poetry of a consummate artist.

The impression is strengthened if one turns to the tides Valéry gave to the prose poetry which he published during his lifetime. It forms a considerable bulk: we find ‘Mélange’, ‘Petites Etudes’, ‘Poésie brute’, ‘Colloques’, ‘Instants’, and in ‘Rhumbs’, itself a sub-heading of ‘Tel Quel’, we find, among other titles, ‘Au hasard et au crayon’, ‘Croquis’ and ‘Poésie perdue’. Valéry's curious mixture of deference and defiance in his various prefatory notes to these collections, suggests that the classification of these pieces was a source of anxiety, as for example the collection ‘Cahier B 1910’, which is offered up to the ‘monstrueux désirs des amateurs du spontané et des idées à l'état brut’ (Œ, ii, p. 571).

The source of his anxiety is not far to seek: Valéry, the author of an acknowledged formal masterpiece like La Jeune Parque, is presenting his public with what appear to be disordered fragments in a bewildering variety of genres – poems in free verse, prose poems, Socratic dialogues, aphorisms, ‘Moralités’, ideas for stories … how would they be received?