Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T06:32:16.123Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Paul Valéry on Pascal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Kenneth N. Douglas*
Affiliation:
Yale University

Extract

As his contribution to the Pascal tercentenary number of the Revue Hebdomadaire, dated July 14, 1923, Paul Valéry chose to make public an attack on Pascal that was impious in its brevity. He entitled it “Variation sur une ‘Pensée’,” and took for his theme “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.” Valéry's own recent and perhaps fleeting fame as a lyric poet did not in everyone's eyes qualify him for the task. Some even among his admirers felt that so antithetical a spirit must inevitably fail to understand Pascal. For the skeptic confronts the believer, the idolator of the intellect its depreciator.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , September 1946 , pp. 820 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For this, and for all subsequent references, see the “Bibliography” at the end of this paper.

2 See “Bibliography” under Brunschvicg.

3 See “Bibliography” under Dubislav.