Monsieur Teste
by Paul Valéry
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"Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, Valaery's novel is profoundly personal. Monsieur Teste reflects Valaery's preoccupation with the phenomenon of a mind detached from sensibility, yet he is also an ordinary fictional character. This volume includes "Snapshots of Monsieur Teste," excerpts from Valaery's Cahiers"--Tags
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Really, I just want to quote, but it's worth noting that what other characters write about M. Teste is much more interesting than the texts attributed to Teste himself.
"Coming back to Monsieur Teste... a character of this kind could not survive in reality for more than a few quarters of an hour."
"He said in his low quick voice: 'Let them enjoy and obey!'"
"I sometimes amuse myself with an idea of our hearts borrowed from physics: they are made of an enormous injustice and a very small justice intimately combined."
"Simply remember that between men there are two relations only: logic or war."
"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind."
And so it goes on: intellectually difficult, beautifully expressed, all show more a fascinating experiment. show less
"Coming back to Monsieur Teste... a character of this kind could not survive in reality for more than a few quarters of an hour."
"He said in his low quick voice: 'Let them enjoy and obey!'"
"I sometimes amuse myself with an idea of our hearts borrowed from physics: they are made of an enormous injustice and a very small justice intimately combined."
"Simply remember that between men there are two relations only: logic or war."
"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind."
And so it goes on: intellectually difficult, beautifully expressed, all show more a fascinating experiment. show less
> Austin Lloyd J. James. Paul Valéry, « Teste » ou « Faust » ?
In: Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, 1965, n°17. pp. 245-256. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://www.persee.fr/doc/caief_0571-5865_1965_num_17_1_2291
> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Valery-Monsieur-Teste/2818
> Voir un extrait : https://books.google.fr/books?id=gcNcDwAAQBAJ&hl=fr&printsec=frontcover&...
In: Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, 1965, n°17. pp. 245-256. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://www.persee.fr/doc/caief_0571-5865_1965_num_17_1_2291
> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Valery-Monsieur-Teste/2818
> Voir un extrait : https://books.google.fr/books?id=gcNcDwAAQBAJ&hl=fr&printsec=frontcover&...
Jan 26, 2021 (Edited)French
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Harry T. Moore has written in Twentieth Century French Literature to World War II: "Paul Valery, who published his most important verse between 1917 and 1922, is the greatest French poet the twentieth century has so far produced... .Few modern poets.. .have presented richer experience through their verses. Valery.. .could handle abstractions with show more a living and always poetic concreteness, and put them into comparable verse-music." He was also a critic and aesthetic theorist, interested in art, architecture, and mathematics. His skepticism, malice, and learning brought him both admiration and hostility. Valery had been a member of the Mallarme circle in the 1890s and wrote much symbolist poetry at that time, but an unhappy love affair caused him to fall poetically silent (he earned his living as a journalist) until Gide and others persuaded him, 20 years later, to publish some of his youthful work. He had thought to add a short new poem and instead wrote La Jeune Parque (The Young Fate) (1917), several hundred lines in length. It won him instant recognition in poetic circles. Several collections of his earlier poems were published in the 1920s, as well as the great Cimetiere Marin (Graveyard by the Sea), a powerful meditation on time and mortality. From then until his death in 1945, he wrote chiefly aesthetic theory, criticism, and an unfinished play about Faust. He helped to revive lively interest in the symbolists and had a pervading influence on French culture generally, though his poetry is not easy for the casual reader. His criticism and aesthetic theory had an important influence on the structuralist critics of the 1960s. He was elected to the French Academy in 1925. His Collected Works (1971--75) have been published in expert translations by the Bollingen Foundation. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original publication date
- 1896 (La Soirée...) (La Soirée...); 1926; 1946 (extended posthumous ed.) (extended posthumous ed.)
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- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 848.91209 — Literature & rhetoric French Literature French miscellaneous writings 1900- 1900-1999 1900-1945 Individual authors
- LCC
- PQ2643 .A26 .A23 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 1900-1960
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- 15 — Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 35
- ASINs
- 14
