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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021
In “Au Sujet du ‘Cimetière marin’,” Valéry tells us that this poem originated from a decasyllabic rhythm, at first empty of content, which began running through his mind: “Une figure rythmique vide, ou remplie de syllabes vaines, qui me vint obséder quelque temps.” He speculated on what a modern poet might do with this rhythm, the type of stanza he might use, the composition he might create, and concluded that his poem would be a personal monologue: “Un monologue de ‘moi,’ dans lequel les thèmes les plus simples et les plus constants de ma vie affective et intellectuelle, tels qu'ils s'étaient imposés à mon adolescence et associés à la mer et à la lumière d'un certain lieu des bords de la Méditerranée, fussent appelés, tramés, opposés . . . ”
Since Valéry speaks of intellectual and affective themes of his adolescence, it is not surprising if we find similarities between “Le Cimetière marin,” written between 1917 and 1920, and a long poem of Valéry's youth, “Profusion du soir,” “abandoned” in 1899 and published for the first time in 1926 in Quelques vers anciens and in the augmented second edition of L'Album de vers anciens. The parallel, however, extends beyond the themes. The two poems have a similar structure, and frequently, at corresponding points in the structure, we find similar images, ideas, and even similar vocabulary. While “Profusion du soir” can hardly be considered an early version of “Le Cimetière marin,” a number of its aspects reappear in the later poem. This fact may well explain the note “poème abandonné” which follows the title of “Profusion du soir.” If Valéry left “Profusion du soir” in an abandoned state, it is possibly because he was no longer interested in working on the early poem after creating “Le Cimetière marin.”
1 Paul Valéry, “Au Sujet du ‘Cimetière marin’,” Œuvres, ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Pléiade, 1957), i, 1503.
2 But as Professor Hytier has suggested to me, there is no reason to exclude the other meaning that Valéry may have intended for “poème abandonné,” i.e., “poem full of abandon.” This sense would describe the poet offering himself throughout the poem to the Absolute as in “Le Cimetière marin”: “Je m'abandonne à ce brillant espace” (“C.M.” vi).
3 “Je ne me suis jamais référé qu'à mon MOI PUR, par quoi j'entends l'absolu de la conscience, qui est l'opération unique et uniforme de se dégager automatiquement de tout, et dans ce tout figure notre personne même, avec son histoire, ses singularités, ses puissances diverses et ses complaisances propres. Je compare volontiers ce MOI PUR à ce précieux Zéro de l'écriture mathématique, auquel toute expression algébrique s'égale . . . Cette manière de voir m'est, en quelque sorte, consubstantielle. Elle s'impose à ma pensée depuis un demi-siècle ...” Paul Valéry, Lettres à quelques-uns (Paris, 1952), p. 246.
4 In “Profusion du soir” stanzas i through iii contain the first upward and downward movements, stanzas iv through vii the second, stanzas vii through xvi the third. In “Le Cimetière marin” stanzas i through viii contain the first upward and downward movements, stanzas ix through xxi the second. In “Profusion du soir” stanza xvi contains the final upward movement and in “Le Cimetière marin” stanzas xxii through xxiv.
5 Among examples of this device in “Profusion du soir”: a. “vapeurs” (x), describing what the imagination sees in the clouds, invites comparison with “vapeur” (vi), describing what the sensibility sees in the clouds. b. “Ce vin bu” (vii), which is the wine of sensibility, recalls “Je bois le vin céleste” (i), which is the wine of the senses. c. “Une toute dernière rose occidentale” (xv), to which the poet clings as night falls, invites comparison with “Et rose que respire un mortel immobile” (v), the same rose which earlier betrayed the hero by intoxicating his sensibility. The same device recurs in “Le Cimetière marin”: a. “l'amertume est douce” (xii), as the hero is excited by the spectacle of the Absolute, recalls “Amère, sombre et sonore citerne” (viii), a moment of defeat. b. “Ils ont fondu dans une absence épaisse” (xv), where the hero is beginning to realize that the dead are extinct, recalls “Comme le fruit se fond en jouissance” (v) where the hero welcomed this melting away. c. “couleurs de mensonge” (xvii), where the hero accuses the real world, recalls “Composé d'or, de pierre et d'arbres sombres” (x), where the hero yielded to the sensuous attractions of the cemetery, d. “Chanterez-vous quand serez vaporeuse?” (xvii), a moment of tragedy, invites comparison with “Je hume ici ma future fumée” (v), moment of triumph.
6 For example:
Mon œil, quoiqu'il s'attache au sort souple des ondes,
Et boive comme en songe à l'éternel verseau,
Garde une chambre fixe et capable des mondes;
Et ma cupidité des surprises profondes
Voit à peine au travers du transparent berceau
Cette femme d'écume et d'algue et d'or que roule
Sur le sable et le sel la meule de la houle. (“P.du S.” ix)
7 As in the line “Venez, effarouchés, hérissant vos plumages” whose metaphor, as Walzer has pointed out, announces the “colombes” of “Le Cimetière marin.” Pierre-Olivier Walzer, La Poésie de Valéry (Geneva, 1953), p. 108.
8 Paul Valéry, “Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci,” Œuvres, i, 1160.