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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Sexuality is a powerful element in Valéry's poetry, but also a dangerous threat. Valéry resolves the threat in ambiguous imagery and this ambiguity has poetic value. His poetry utilizes nineteenth-century themes, but Valéry transforms them through his physiological awareness. His sexual imagery gains force by exclusive focus on physical passion and all possible aspects of the flesh, and by the use of elaborate developments containing an accumulation of related words. But the interests of “poésie pure” impose limits on his realism. Negative attitudes also influence Valéry's choice of imagery. He minimizes sexual languor and excludes intellectualized eroticism from his poetry while significant words in manuscripts and finished poems reflect his critical attitude. There is no celebration of the woman in Charmes and no union with her. Significantly, Valéry prefers words such as “abandon” and “dons” and the breast image to represent the female body rather than hands, lips, eyes—all of which imply union. Préciosité is also used as a defense against sexuality. In the ending of La Jeune Parque, however, sexuality seems to triumph, but this ending is complex, and is far from being as sexual as it first appears.
Note 1 in page 944 It might seem that Valéry's original intentions did not give the importance to sexuality which he recognized in the final version: “J'ai même été forcé, pour attendrir un peu le poème, d'y introduire des morceaux non prévus et faits après coup. Tout ce qui est sexuel est surajouté. Tel, le passage central sur le Printemps qui semble maintenant d'importance essentielle.” Lettres à quelques-uns (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), p. 124. The first state of the poem, however, opened with the Serpent's bite, and the sexual forest scene (“… ma voix / Que j'ignorais si rauque et d'amour si voilée…”) occupied the central position and was immediately followed by the desire for death. Paul Valéry, La Jeune Parque, ed. Octave Nadal (Paris: Le Club du Meilleur Livre, 1957), p. 222.
Note 2 in page 944 “ 'Hérodiade,' 'L'Après-Midi' et La Jeune Parque. Celleci n'aurait pas existé sans ceux-là, bien entendu.” Paul Valéry, Cahiers (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1957–61), xxiv, 117.
Note 3 in page 945 Œuvres, ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1957), i, 1747.
Note 4 in page 945 L'Analyse de l'esprit dans les cahiers de Valéry (Paris: Corti, 1963), pp. 104–33.
Note 5 in page 945 Exaggerated notions of Valéry's attitudes have led, e.g., to wrong interpretations of “Aurore,” in which the poet, waking in the early morning, rejects ideas which have sketched themselves in his mind while he slept. He rejects them, however, not because they are involuntary productions of the mind but simply because he prefers at that moment to write poetry !
Note 6 in page 945 This dismissal of sexual passion from the present moments of the Parque's monologue was so extreme that Valéry later felt it necessary to reintroduce frankly sexual passages (the “springtime” passage and the following lines describing the Parque's reactions) into the poem, reestablishing a balance between sexual drives and the intellect. Such dosage is a common compositional technique in Valéry and can be seen in the Zeno stanza of “Le Cimetière marin” where a philosophical tone compensates, as Valéry himself pointed out, the extreme emotions of the preceding stanzas.
Note 7 in page 945 Entrapment is one of Valéry's obsessions: “Tout homme enferme quelque chose de terriblement sombre, de prodigieusement amer, de maudissant, d'exécrant, de détestant la vie, le sentiment d‘être tombé dans une trappe, d'avoir cru et d'avoir été joué, d‘être voué à la rage impuissante, à la démission totale, à une puissance barbare et inflexible, qui donne et qui retient, qui engage et qui abandonne, qui promet et trahit, et qui nous inflige par surcroît la honte de nous plaindre, de la traiter en intelligence, en être sensible et que l'on peut toucher.” Valéry, Cahiers, viii, 207. See also, in Charmes, “Au Platane,” “Ebauche d'un serpent” stanzas iii and iv, “Le Cimetière marin” stanza xvii, and “Le Rameur.”
Note 8 in page 945 Paul Valéry, Propos me concernant, in André Berne-Joffroy, Présence de Valéry (Paris: Pion, 1944), p. 7. Typically, Mallarmé makes use of exiguous images, “un doigt simple,” “ses talons ingénus,” to represent the female body in “L'Après-Midi d'un faune.”
Note 9 in page 945 The Parque does wear a dress, but it is significantly inconspicuous.
Note 10 in page 945 La Jeune Parque, pp. 264 and 253.
Note 11 in page 945 James R. Lawler, Lecture de Valéry, une étude de charmes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), pp. 191, n. 1, 90, 79.
Note 12 in page 945 Paul Eluard, “Grain de sable de mon salut,” in Derniers Poèmes d'amour (Paris: Seghers, 1967), p. 92.
Note 13 in page 945 Valéry himself referred to it as a “petit poème purement sentimental.” Cahiers, xxviii, 427.
Note 14 in page 945 Some critics have given a simple sexual interpretation to the poem, but this is clearly an error. The bee is always an intellectual symbol in La Jeune Parque and Charmes. Furthermore, a poem about a virgin imploring a sexual awakening would have no significance in Valéry's Charmes, an “egocentric” collection of poetry where all the poems revolve around Valéry himself.