VARIETY
phantoms and only those whom he
wi$hed to hear preserved their
natural size in his presence.
From an extreme fatigue which
racked him, crept over him, wasted
him from top to bottom, he as–
cended to an incomparable vivacity
of eye, and of mustache.
Laughter broke open the depths
of his soul. He was not afraid that
his secrets would be discovered.
Others would not be able to make
use of them. He exposed and drs–
played good-naturedly the most
profound recesses of his being. For
a unique machinery operated in
· his speeches and in his conversa–
tion. One can say equally well that
his speeches had the grace of his
conversation and his conversation
the singular foreshadowing of his
speeches.
To the public, his work makes
of him a piece of sculpture through
which he endures. For us, a friend
has been thrown overboard from
the ship in which we make our
journey together.
One of the great possessions of
Paul Valery was his innate and al–
most magical feeling for the right
setting.
How many poets throw away
their gifts in a disorderly manner,
ignorant of how to make use of
them! The Countess de Noailles
was not the only one who
discov–
ered
endlessly, and confused what
she discovered through a total mis–
conception of perspective and of
values. When Paul Valery
discov-
125
ered
the trivial and the insipid, he
found immediately, and by means
of a method to which I pay hom–
age, how to seek out the angle at
which the best light is cast upon
the subject. This phenomenon of
the right setting is one of the fun–
damental secrets of poetry. By read–
ing and rereading Malherbe, Ra–
cine, Mallarme, Paul Valery track–
ed down the formula of this secret.
The magic potion which he gives
to us drop by drop is composed of
simple elements, but its strength–
the strength of what is simple-is
effective only in brews and doses.
One might write indefinitely
about Paul Valery, about his learn–
ing, his malice, his scepticism,
which was that of an Encyclope–
dist, his naivete, which was that
of a school boy, and the prudence
with which he took hold of and
developed his experiences as an
alchemist. But it is not appropri–
ate for us to speak of these things.
Others will do so. And they will
call us
the salt of the earth.
It is
for us to say farewell to him in a
way of which he would have ap–
proved by quoting the letter from
Paris in which Roger Lannes de–
scribed his burial: "Few people
were present. When Ronsard died,
the funeral orator declared that
his birth, in 1525, had been a com–
pensation for the disaster at Pavia.
Now, Valery was born in 1871.
But all has decayed. Poets and
royal honors!"
JEAN CocTEAU
