The Art of Poetry

An authoritative collection of Valéry’s important essays on poetry

This volume collects all of Paul Valéry’s major meditations on the theory and practice of poetry. These pieces range from his first essay, “On Literary Technique” (1889), to his last, “Variations on the Eclogues” (1944). Among them are essays on his own work and that of other poets, on “pure poetry,” on the speaking of verse, and on the art of translation. In these pieces, Valéry focuses on the deliberate formal work of poetry—in his own poems as well as in those of La Fontaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and others.

The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, the first collected edition of the writer in English, features new translations, the original French on facing pages for poetic works, and editorial notes.