Paul Valéry
Charmes

“That which the mind pursues in its analyses and constructions of worlds, that which it chases on earth and in heaven, can only be itself”.

Paul Valéry

What can be said in response to a statement like this? What about all those artists who have tried to transpose the secrets of nature onto the musical staff, film, or sheet of paper? What about the investigators of the unknown, both cosmic and human, who try to persuade us of the genuineness of their visions? What about us, reviewers of DeBaser? We who claim to convey the emotions or sensations a record evokes in us by inviting readers to follow the spirals of our thought.

According to Valéry's assertion, every written page not only speaks solely about its writer but refers essentially to elements of literary creation. Therefore, when reading a review, at best, we can only glimpse some fragment of the writer's thought constructed, hopefully, within a certain syntactic correctness, enriched by a certain semantic richness, and ennobled by a unique style.

In short, if it is true that when we listen to a record or read a book, we are merely listening or reading ourselves, the same happens when we attempt to talk about it. We think we are presenting a record/book, but in reality, we are discussing ourselves.

The awareness of this immense cul de sac haunted Valéry throughout his life. A promising poet who, just over twenty, had already published several poems in the most prestigious magazines of the time, had obtained the invaluable favor of Stephane Mallarmé, and had printed “Monsieur Teste” (a strange novel steeped in a fierce and lucid disillusionment about the intrinsic value of the arts), decided to abandon, forever he believes and will be for twenty years, everything related to literature.

Just like Teste, a disdainful theorist of silence, impossible advocate of nothingness and his alter ego, who claimed that “What men call a superior being is a being that has made a mistake. To marvel at him, one must see him, and to be seen, he must show himself. He thus proves to me that he is possessed by the stupid mania of his renown. For this reason, every great man is tainted by a mistake. Every spirit considered mighty, begins with the mistake that makes him known”, Valéry, with a rare consistency in the art world, proudly returns to the shadows.

To the calls of his fellow letter companions, he responds with a sardonic, indifferent smile and matures his personal truth: “The aim is not to create a certain work, but to make oneself capable of creating that work. Therefore, one must construct within oneself that self which could be the instrument capable of creating that particular work”.

Only after many years of public silence (balanced by the colossal private writing of the “Cahiers”, which would be published only after his death) and yielding to the insistent urging of André Gide, Valéry reentered almost for fun into the literary world, first publishing the “Album of Ancient Verses” (a collection of youthful poems “reinforced” by the mature stance) and then “The Young Fate” (a highly refined uninterrupted monologue, constructed thinking of the ebb and flow of a wave crashing on a beach).

And then comes “Charmes” (“Enchantments”). It's only in these twenty-one compositions that Valéry finally glimpses a sense, for him the only possible one, in a collection of poems.

Precisely in the years when Proust's famous “Recherche…” did nothing but narrate (and fictionalize) the various steps that led Marcel to the decision to write it, the pieces of “Charmes” do nothing but retrace the “history” of the genesis of “Charmes”.

Every analogy, every symbol, every rhetorical figure veils the secret path that in Valéry's consciousness leads an idea, a still vague sensation, to finally transform into a complete poem; “Charmes” is a snake biting its tail; it is Narcissus managing to touch his reflection.

“Aurore”, therefore, opening the collection, is the first glimmer of an emotion that captures the poet's attention; “Les Pas” (“The Steps”) are those silent and precious ones through which an idea begins to gradually develop; “Au Platane” (“To the Plane Tree”) represents immobility, patience, the natural cycle necessary for the poet to distill words; “La Pythie” (“The Pythia”) is the caricature of romantic inspiration and the gushing creation that Valéry abhorred; the concluding “Palme” (“Palm”) is that of “victory”, meaning a work consciously created and shaped by an exact, mathematical Poetics.

It must be said that this rigor, this exhausting quest for semantic/syntactic perfection, constitutes a weakness for the work: in some poems, the images seem those produced by a sterile synthetic product, and personally, I remain convinced that the sacred poetic fire cannot be so caged by the cold bars of formal/rational control. It risks becoming a chemical distillate, a short circuit.

The best episodes are the poems [the splendid “Le Cimetière Marin” (“The Marine Cemetery”), “Ebauche d’un serpent” (“Sketch of a Snake”) and “Fragments du Narcisse” (“Fragments of Narcissus”)] in which, perhaps due to the length, perhaps due to the seductive continuum of references between reason and inspiration, it seems that Valéry hesitates, that he unconsciously lets himself go far from himself, in seas, gardens, and woods populated by beings and images that impose themselves on him, instead of constantly enduring it.

It's difficult to have a precise idea of Valéry, but one thing I can say for certain: if we accept as valid what Paul Verlaine postulated about the Accursed Poets, i.e. poets “Absolute in imagination, absolute in expression”, Paul Valéry was the last, great Accursed Poet.