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Paul Valery 1871 - 1945 (74)

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Paul Valery (October 30, 1871 - July 20, 1945) was a French poet, writer and philosopher. He was born in 1871 in Sete, France but grew up in Montpellier where he studied law. After his military service, he joined a circle of recognized contemporary poets who encouraged him in his first poetic efforts. He published lyrics to various innovative magazines for about two years, until one stormy night in 1892, at age 21, on the occasion of a severe heartbreak, when he decided to steer clear of every human passion, including the poetry as too emotional for himself. Paul spent about twenty years in the study of language, mathematics and philosophy, wrote dozens of political essays, philosophy and aesthetics, art criticism, debates and articles. In 1900 he married Jeannie Gobillard, with whom he had three children. For some time he worked as a translator in London and then to the Ministry of War where he left disgusted with the greed of the colonialists and the coldness with which they stole vast areas of Africa. After a full twenty years away from poetry, he composed the masterpiece poem "The young Fate" (1917) which displays thw agony of spirit, as it progresses from casual unconsciousness to conscious life and contemplation. In 1920 the businessman he worked for died and Paul decided to devote himself exclusively to writing. Next to his stochasticall essays most literary works such as the poem "The Ocean cemetery", “Efpalinos" etc. are taken place.

Throughout his life he will support that method and technique is very important in poetry, he stubbornly rejects the inspiration, attributing naivety to those who talk about poetic muse. After his election to the French Academy in 1925, Valery is recognized internationally as a scholar, befriends the leading thinkers in the field of literature, science, politics, represents France on cultural matters to the League of Nations, giving numerous lectures on the best European universities. Valerie expressed his opposition to the policy of his time, stating that had put interest above human lives and that manipulated and enslaved free thought. Also blame the rational education because sterilizing creative imagination and was opposed to the fact that positivistic science progressively exclude anything not producing appreciable and measurable phenomena. Valery worked for a united Europe from his positions as a Chairman of the Arts and the League of Nations and during the interwar period as the Director of the Mediterranean University Center of Nice. He might be better known for his poetry, but perhaps his most impressive work is the monumental diary, 'Notebooks'. Early in the morning, every morning throughout his adult life, he was writing something on the Notebooks, once he said about that: "Having spent those hours in the life of mind, I gained thereof the right to be stupid for the rest of the day." The issues that concern the "Notebooks" are often, in an unexpected way, Science and Mathematics. In fact, such issues seem to had absorbed his attention much more time than his famous poetry. The "Notebooks" contain the original versions of many aphorisms later introduced in his books. He died in Paris but was buried in the cemetery of his hometown, which he had inspired one of his most famous poems, the “The graveyard by the sea”.

THE GRAVEYARD BY THE SEA (beginning)
This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by,/Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly./Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame /That sea forever starting and re-starting./When thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding/Are the long vistas of celestial calm!/What grace of light, what pure toil goes to form/The manifold diamond of the elusive foam!/What peace I feel begotten at that source!/When sunlight rests upon a profound sea,/Time's air is sparkling, dream is certainty/Pure artifice both of an eternal Cause

THE YOUNG FATE (beginning)
Who is that weeping, if not simply the wind, /At this sole hour, with ultimate diamonds? ...But who /Weeps, so close to myself on the brink of tears? /This hand of mine, dreaming it strokes my features, /Absently submissive to some deep-hidden end, /Waits for a tear to melt out of my weakness /And, gradually dividing from my other destinies, /For the purest to enlighten a broken heart in silence. /The surf murmurs to me the shadow of a reproach, /Or withdraws below, in its rocky gorges, /Like a disappointed thing, drunk back in bitterness, /A rumor of lamentation and self-constraint.... /What seek you, bristling, erect? And this hand of ice, /And what shivering of an effaced leaf is it /Persists amid you, isles of my naked breast?... /I am glittering and bound to this unknown heaven.... /The giant cluster gleams on my thirst for disasters