Variety

In the introduction to Variety , written by Paul Valery and translated by Malcom Cowley, the latter writes about the poet's goal to produce pure poetry, turning literature into a "form of mental exercise," and making "his primary object...a defense of the conscious mind." Comparing Valery to "Baudelaire and Racine, to Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Montaigne," Cowley sees the most important moment in the poet's career as being the time when he "was...ceasing to write, in order to devote himself to more essential aims." And he adds that when "'he writes poems,' I observed, [it is] 'as a laboratory experiment in thought.'"

• ISBN-13: 9781598381061
• Page Count: 304
• Book Height: 8.5 x Width: 0.6875 x Length: 5.5 inches