Orbis Litterarum 1988, 43, 260-269

Paul Valery and the Truth of Prose and Poetry Colin Davis, Cambridge, U.K.

Valiry criticizes literature on the grounds that it cannot give an adequate representation of truth. The novel is particularly culpable in this respect since it abuses the communicative function of ordi- nary language. It can say nothing useful or truthful about reality and human psychology. The poet knows that his art is purely linguistic, so he does not aim to describe or to communicate something outside language. However, Valery attempts to save literature from the hermetic formalism which such views would seem to imply. The novel resembles life by its very arbitrariness, and it may contain an active force which impinges on reality. Poetry does not share the arbitrariness of the novel; but Valery’s identification of the source of poetry as the correspondence of being with the poet’s inner voice, however dubious in terms of the sceptical attitude which he adopts elsewhere, allows him to pre- serve a realm of truth proper to poetry.

I1 y a pourtant une vkrite et une seule. Mais ou est-elle? Voila une fameuse question ... Je me penche sur mon vide. Je crie dans ce puits ... Surgissez, Vkriti! J’esptre, je crois fermement que vous existez et ites unique ... %en. Toujours ces lambeaux d’esprit dam un chaos actuel. Ma vkriti se dem2le bien lentement de ce hachis, hachis, hachis ... J’ai peut-&tre mange hier soir quelque chose de lourd? (Mon Fausf. 0 11, pp. 394-9.’

In Faust’s self-deflating imprecation of truth it is possible to see the uneasy alliance of a sceptical voice with the demand for an immediate and unambigu- ous revelation of unimpeachable validity. Faust is not Valkry, but he is one of Valtry’s “voix diverses”.* In his writing Valtry combines an attack on metaphysics as radical as anything found in French post-Structuralist thought with an abiding concern for truth. The latter explains his lifelong distrust of literature, as he indicated in his Cahiers in 1928: “D’ailleurs, le vrai c’est mon objection contre la litttrature” (C 11, p. 1209). He objects to the “principe fondamental de l’icriture qui est le charlatanisme, le masque, le faux psycho- logique” (C 11, p. 1151); and in his preface to Monsieur Teste he is categorical about the incompatibility of writing and thought: “L‘acte d’kcrire demande

Paul Valiry and the Truth of Prose and Poetry 26 1

toujours un certain ‘sacrifice de l’intellect’” (0 11, p. 11). Such statements inevitably raise the question of how Valery could continue to “sacrifice his intellect” to a literary idol which had been unceremoniously excluded from the domain of truth. His rejection of literature is never definitive, and his aesthetics are characterized by a fundamental ambivalence concerning the status of both truth and writing. Valiry has contributed more than any other single author in the twentieth century to the breakdown of rigid distinctions between literary and philo- sophical texts. This breakdown is possible because, in Valiry’s view, the philosopher has no more certain knowledge of truth than the novelist or poet. The Socrates of Eupalinos can claim with his Platonic counterpart that he ‘[n’aimait] que le Vrai’ (0 11, p. 87); but Valtry makes the philosopher acknowledge that his truth may be more fallacious than the illusions of the poets and myth-makers: “J’ai us6 d’une viriti et d’une sin&riti bien plus menteuses que les mythes, et que les paroles inspiries” (0 11, p. 139). The truth for Valery may be a means to an end (“La vtritk est un moyen. I1 n’est pas le seul” 0 I, p. 380), an expression of the will to power, or a metaphysical obfuscation resulting from lack of precision or rigour.’ As numerous passages from the Cahiers insist, the fundamental error of the philosophers is to attach undue significance to “questions ma1 posies” (C I, p. 595). Philosophy has become the search for truth in language rather than through the relationship between language and the non-verbal:

C’est le langage que est la matibre de la philosophie, a partir des Grecs -, le langage tenu inconsciemment pour contenant “en puissance” la “vtritt”. Ce que je me redis ainsi: le langage donnt est capable de la “viriti”. I1 s’agit de I’employer avec des prkautions et I’habileth requises. D’ou dialectique - D’od spiculations sur I’gtre; sur 1’Un - Sans rtsultat - car le verbe n’engendre que verbe (C I, pp. 729-30).

The philosopher who seeks truth in language is the victim of a metaphysical illusion; but at the same time thought adheres to language and can therefore never achieve full correspondence to what lies outside itself.‘ The honest philosopher must recognize that his relationship to language bears an essen- tial resemblance to that of the poet: “Qu’il se dise qu’il est un artisan et artiste dans l’art de transformer les donnies communes en expressions exquises, et qu’il ne recherche pas d’autre vCritC que la sienne” (C I, p. 747). Valiry adopts a sceptical attitude to the whole question of truth and particu-

262 Colin Davis

larly to the possibility of truth within literature. The most culpable literary genre is the novel which, in Valtry’s view, sets out to give a true representation of life and of human psychology. It fails on both counts and moreover confuses the necessary distinctions between mental activity and external reality. What Valtry objects to is not simply the bad psychologizing of naive Realists, but rather the whole project of representation. If literature is its own reality (“Le seul rtel dans I’art, c’est I’art” 0 I, p. 613), then it cannot refer to any historical or psychological reality outside itself. The novel is incapable of giving valid knowledge; and the assertion that “All is true” made at the beginning of Balzac’s Le Pire Goriot would be in Valtry’s view the implicit claim and the ultimate deception of all Realism.s Valtry’s criticisms of the novel have been well analysed;6 and there has been almost universal agreement amongst his commentators that they are largely invalidated by his imperfect knowledge and understanding of the genre. W. N. Ince speaks for most with his observation that “[Valtry’s] hostility towards the genre is perhaps too rooted for his ideas to be truly and construct- ively valuable”.’ Valtry, it has been argued, had little understanding even of the novelists whose works were familiar to him. He completely overlooked, for example, the similarity of his own aesthetics to those of Flaubert;* and whilst accepting that his criticisms may be valid for some second-order Realist novels, commentators have denied the pertinence of his critique for the novel as a whole. Moreover, it has been argued (with some reservations) that the New Novelists achieved a sort of “roman valtryen” which would fulfil Valtry’s cri- teria for good art.9 Valtry certainly regards the novel as bad art. But this is not the crux of his criticism since bad art can always be improved upon by better artists. In fact, even if he had “correctly understood” the aesthetics of Flaubert or foreseen the New Novel, his argument could have remained virtually un- changed. What Valtry objects to in the novel is the confusion to which it gives rise. This confusion can be explained by reference to his distinction between prose and poetry. Prose and poetry may use the same vocabulary and syntax, but their function is different. The aim of prose is to be understood, and there- fore the speaker should eliminate all ambiguity and anything which might ob- struct the immediate understanding of his intentions, desires, orders or opin- ions. Poetry on the other hand does not seek to be understood in the same way because the poet does not want the meaning of his poem to distract from its linguistic constituents. Poetry, then, does not share the communicative obli- gation of prose:

Paul Valery and the Truth of Prose and Poetry 263

Notons ici que la poisie serait impossible si elle itait astreinte au regime de la ligne droite. On vous enseigne: dites qu’il pleut. si YOUS voulez dire qu’il pleut! Mais jamais l’objet d’un pokte n’est et ne peut Stre de nous apprendre qu’il pleut. I1 n’est pas besoin d’un p&te pour nous persuader de prendre notre parapluie (0 I, p. 1372).

The key notion which distinguishes prose from poetry is that of destination. In a well-known analogy, Valtry compares the opposition between prose and poetry to that between walking and dancing. Prose, like walking, has direction and purpose: “La marche comme la prose a toujours un objet prtcis. Elle est un acte dirige vers quelque objet que notre but est de joindre” (0 I, p. 1371); prose is described as a form of language which “s’tvanouit a peine arrive” (0 I, p. 1372) or as ‘ce discours dont l’unique destination est la comprehension’ (0 I, p. 1373). Poetry has no such finality; like the dance, ‘elle ne va nulle part’ (0 I, p. 1371). Valtry knows that he is making an extreme distinction between communicative and non-communicative uses of language, and he accepts the necessity of recognizing ‘tous les types de leur melange’ (0 I, p. 1370). Although Valtry does not explicitly make the point, the novel must be regarded as one such mixed state. It fails to honour the pact of communication and intelligibility which characterizes good prose even though it may use identical linguistic forms. Breton reports that ValCry refused to write “La marquise sortit a cinq heures”, which is given as being typical of the sort of statement made at the beginning of a novel.’O In his Cahiers Valtry gives further illustration of the arbitrary variability of fictional statements: “La comtesse prit le train de 8 heures”, “La marquise prit le train de 9 heures” (C 11, p. 1162). Each of these statements describes the beginning of a journey which nevertheless has no real destination; and the directionless journeys of Valery’s marchionesses and countesses are like the language of fiction which gives the impression of finality but ultimately leads nowhere. The narrative text seems to make statements of fact, but it is not intelligible in the manner of good prose because, at the strict level of historical reference, there is nothing to be understood. The language of fiction cannot be analysed in terms of truth and falsehood:

Romans. Si je dis: le marquis ferma la porte ou bien: klise avait 30 ans - Personne n’y pourra contredire - Cela n’est ni vrai ni faux, puisqu’ filise n’existe pas, le marquis ni la porte ne sont (C 11, p. 1190).

For Valiry, the purely verbal constitution of literature makes it intractable

264 Colin Davis

to any discourse of truth which must depend upon some notion of validation external to language. Critical observations about literature are no more true or false than apparently factual statements made within the literary text (see 0 I, p. 1287). As Valiry insists in an essay on Stendhal, whose texts he only grudgingly enjoys, “En littirature, le vrai n’est pas concevable” (0 I, p. 570). Valtry’s objection to the novel, then, is not that it gives false infor- mation, but that it adopts verbal forms which are identical to information- bearing statements whilst remaining excluded from such direct communi- cation by its very status as literature. The issue of how well Valery understood Flaubert is of peripheral importance because his interest is in the nature of fictional statements rather than the analysis of any single author. Flaubert’s description of Charles Bovary’s hat deceives the reader into accepting that such an object might exist, and the fact that Flaubert might have deliberately intended to deceive the reader is irrelevant to Valtry’s condemnation of the Realist illusion. If anything it makes it even worse. The novel is a form of semantic abuse (“le roman sait abuser du pouvoir immediat et significatif de la parole” 0 I, p. 770) because it uses the functional properties of language to produce a dangerous simulacrum of reality and to engender the illusion of understanding. The referent of the novel is imaginary rather than a given historical reality; but the language used by the novelist treats imaginary realities as if they were historical facts and so confuses the vital distinction between imaginary and real referents. In his discussions of the novel, Valery speaks principally from the perspective of the reader; and the novel gives the reader an experience akin to hallucination by allowing him to identify with a reality which does not exist:

Voyez le lecteur du roman quand il se plonge dans la vie imaginaire que lui intime sa lecture. Son corps n’existe plus. I1 soutient son front de ses deux mains. I1 est, il se meut, il agit et pitit dans I’esprit seu!. I1 est absorbk par ce qu’il divore; il ne peut se retenir, car je ne sais quel dimon le presse d’avancer. I! veut la suite, et la fin, il est en proie a une sorte d’aliination: il prend parti, i l triomphe, il s’attriste, il n’est plus lui-mcme, il n’est plus qu’un cerveau &par& de ses forces extbrieures, c’est-a-dire livrk a ses images, traversant une sorte de crise de crtdulirt (0 I, p. 1374).

The novel creates a dangerous illusion of intelligibility by its use of ordi- nary, information-bearing language. Poetry is in a sense more honest than prose fiction because it does not adopt the forms appropriate to effective communication. Valtry values the conventions and rules which accentuate the difference between poetry and ordinary language and hence which empha-

Paul Valery and the Truth of Prose and Poetry 265

distinction between communicative and non-communicative idioms. Even obscurity is a legitimate device (“il faut binir les auteurs dificiles de notre temps” 0 I, p. 774) because, as Valtry frequently insists, the aim of poetry is to be read and reread rather than definitively understood: “La potsie n’a pas le moins du monde pour objet de communiquer a quelqu’un quelque notion determinie - a quoi la prose doit suffire” (0 I, p. 1510). Poetic form and expression present the reader with problems which impede perfect comprehension and which therefore draw attention to the poem itself rather than to its meaning. The novel persuades the reader, and perhaps even its author, of its referential capability; the superiority of the poet over the novelist lies in the fact that he recognizes and accepts the purely verbal and non-referential nature of his art: “C’est en quoi la poisie est supirieure a la pritention du romancier moderne: elle comporte moins d’illusion” (C 11, p. 1158). The poet is demystified in respect of language and its capabilities because he has seen through the illusion, shared by philosophers, historians and novelists, that words give knowledge of things. In the poem, language is creative rather than truthful:

La poCsie n’est que la littirature r6duite a I’essentiel de son principe actif. On l’a purgCe des idoles de toute esgce et des illusions rialistes; de I’Cquivoque possible entre le langage de la “viritk“ et le langage de la “criation”, etc. (0 11, p. 548).

The poem should not have a single communicable meaning. This does not mean that it should be literally meaningless, but simply that its principal function is not communication. The language of the poem is its own end, and does not require or sanction validation by any external measure. The poet knows that “le riel d’un discours, ce sont les mots seulement et les formes” (C 11, p. 1099); and he can “considirer de haut romanciers, philoso- phes, et tous ceux qui sont assujettis a la parole par la cridulitt; - qui doivent croire que leur discours est rtel par son contenu et signifie quelque rtaliti”

The superiority of poetry over the novel, and even over philosophy and historiography, is absolute but ambiguous. The poet’s insight into the purely verbal nature of his art is, in Valiry’s case at least, a painful recognition of the limitations of his endeavour. Delivered from the illusion of representation and demystified as to the truth of poetry and of writing in general, Valiry cannot bring himself to abandon all notion of truth in favour of uninhibited poetic dissemination. The erasure of distinctions between truth and falsehood

(C 11, pp. 1098-9).

266 Colin Davis

would be an epistemological catastrophe which Valtry would clearly not tolerate. He maintains his stern, truth-centred stance and is never fully happy with his own activity as poet. The “sacrifice de l’intellect” (0 11, p. 11) which Valiry deplores in the act of writing is no less deplorable in poetry, even when the poet recognizes the necessity of his exclusion from the domain of truth. Valtry regards reality and language as separate spheres with very little possibility of exchange. He saw in the language of science an attempt to correct the imprecision of ordinary language. Mathematics seemed to offer an idiom in which “la penste et sa notation sont exactement congruentes”.” But Valtry knew that his own work towards a “mathkmatique de l’esprit” was no more than preliminary and that its successful completion lay in an unforeseeable future.’* The more pressing issue for a truth-fixated poet who saw poetry and truth as separate domains was .to save literature from his own sweeping condemnation of the metaphysics of representation. In Valiry’s most negative view, literature can give no useful insight into the nature of the real. In this mood, he certainly seems to justify the charge of “bovarysme esthttique” which has been made against him.” Nevertheless, even within his overwhelmingly hostile discussions of the novel, it is possible to see important ambivalences. Valiry explains that he dislikes the genre partly on the grounds that it permits the infinite play of arbitrary substitutions (see 0 11, pp. 407-08). This absence of necessity makes the novel bad art, but also ensures its profound resemblance to life. The novel, described by ValCry as “aussi arbitraire que le riel (C 11, p. 1162), gives a bad representation of reality, but its arbitrariness and lack of structure may nevertheless make it a good likeness, since it shares essential features with lived experience. Valtry de- nounces those who aim to produce a true image of the real, but also raises the possibility of a form of imitation freed from such mystification. At the same time, he accepts the process of making fiction as a necessary and ordinary human activity which the novelist reproduces in his text. Valtry insists that “la fiction c’est notre vie”: “Nous vivons continuellement en production de fictions [...I Nous ne vivons que de fictions, qui sont nos projets, nos espoirs, nos souvenirs, nos regrets, etc., et nous ne sommes qu’une invention perpttuelle” (0 I, p. 1387). The novelist merely uses the narrative potential which is inherent in any account of experience: “I1 ne doit pas y avoir de difftrences essentielles entre le roman et le rkit nature1 des choses que nous avons vues et entendues” (0 I, p. 771). And so Valtry recognizes himself as a romancier malgri h i :

Paul Valiry and the Truth of Prose and Poetry 267

Je n’aime pas la fiction - Yen ai fabrique d’abondance sous la pression tyranni- que des enfants. Tout le monde en fait tout le jour, comme produit banal d’elimination de l’inutile, ou rtponse naike, et se compliquant et developpant, et rechargeant a l’infini, au besoin non satisfait, a 1’Cveil du desir, de la crainte etc. (C 11, p. 1234-5).

The novelist can, then, be said to practise a form of profound mimesis which imitates not the surface of reality but its underlying arbitrariness, and which illustrates not the psychological truth of humanity but its essential impulse to fictionalize experience. If the novel falsifies reality, i t is because the falsifi- cation of reality makes a vital contribution to the human activity of making sense. The novel is “true” in as far as it corresponds to reality by means other than the impossible path of truthful representation. On this issue, Valtry’s insight into Proust is a decisive statement of the possibility of fiction after the collapse of the Realist illusion:

proust] n’a pas saisi la “vie” par l’action meme; il I’a rejointe, et comme imitee, par la surabondance des connexions que la moindre image trouvait si aisement dans la propre substance de l’auteur. I1 donnait des racines infinies a tous les germes d’analyse que les circonstances de sa vie avaient semes dans sa duree. L,‘intCr&t de ses ouvrages reside dans chaque fragment. On peut ouvrir le livre ou l’on veut; sa vitalite ne depend point de ce qui precede, et en quelque sorte de I’ilfusion acquise; elle tient a ce qu’on pourrait nommer l’activitk propre du tissu m&me de son texte (0 I, p. 772).

The consequence of such insights is that it is possible for Valkry after all to assign a certain truth to literature. This truth is located in the activity of the text rather than in its overt subject: “La vkriti en litttrature, telle que je la conqois, n’est pas du tout la description de ce qui est, plus ou moins exacte - mais dans la construction de cela” (C 11, p. 1150). The construction and construal of meaning replace representation as the truth of the literary work. Valery never fully revises his evaluation of the novel on the basis of this insight, but it forms the cornerstone of his poetic theory and practice. It also explains the importance of the reader in his aesthetics.“ Meaning is not given in the text, but generated in the productive exchange of text and reader. Obscurity and ambiguity, which Valery describes as “le domaine propre de la potsie” (C 11, p. 1081), may legitimately be used to obstruct understanding and to stimulate the reader to new constructions.

Valtry’s critique of the metaphysics of representation did not, however, make him fully immune from metaphysical temptation. Aiming to achieve

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what Christine Crow calls a “poetry of voice”,ls he committed what was by his own analysis the fundamental metaphysical error by confusing an art of language with the knowlege of being. He identified the source of the poetic utterance as ‘L‘gtre vivant ET pensant’ (C 11, p. 293) and thereby attempted to liberate poetry from the linguistic strait jacket to which it seemed con- demned by his own aesthetics. The truth of poetry is redefined in this light as the intimate accord of language and being:

Pour rnoi la voix inteneure me sert de repire. Je rejette tout ce qu’elle refuse, comme exagere; car la voix intkrieure ne supporte que les paroles dont le sens est secretement d’accord avec 1’2tre vrui; dont la musique est le graphique meme des mouvernents et arrets de cet itre (C 11, p. 1076).

Valiry criticizes writing as a “sacrifice de l’intellect” (0 11, p. 11) but continues to write. He claims that poetry has nothing to say but also insists that it should be a “Ete de l’intellect” (0 11, p. 546 and C 11, p. 1097). Writing appears both as a travesty of thought and as the indispensable proof and support of the vitality of the intellect. Valiry knew that there was no art without faith;I6 and perhaps his dubious identification of the source of the poetic utterance as the correspondence of his “voix intirieure” to ‘l’ttre vrai’ is the necessary blindspot in an otherwise rigorous scepticism which allows him to preserve a realm of truth proper to poetry. Unproven and unprovable, Valery’s act of faith is what gives poetry, even in the eyes of the sceptic, its magical otherness.

NOTES 1. References to ValCry’s works are given in the text. The following editions are used:

Qhvres (Bibliotheque de la Pleiade), edited by Jean Hytier, 2 volumes, (Pans: Gallirnard, 1957 and 1960); Cuhiers (Bibliotheque de la Pliiade), edited by Judith

, Robinson, 2 volumes, (Paris: Gallirnard, 1973 and 1974). The abbreviation 0 for Buvres or C for Cuhiers is followed by volume and page numbers.

2. The allusion is to Mon Fuust, in which Faust describes his idea of a book which will contain ‘toutes [ses] voix diverses’ (0 11, p. 297).

3. On Valtry’s views on truth and metaphysics, see Regine Pietra, Vulkry: Directions spatiales et purcours verbal (Paris: Minard, 1981). pp. 180-207, and Hanna Char- ney, Le Scepticisme de Vuliry (Paris: Didier, 1969), p. 18 and pp. 33-4.

4. For an authoritative discussion of Valtry’s thoughts on language as shown in the Cuhiers, see Judith Robinson, Liinulyse de I’esprit duns les Cuhiers de VulPry (Paris: JoSC Corti, 1963), pp. 9-27.

5 . Balzac, Le Pire Goriot (Paris: Garnier-Flamrnarion, 1966), p. 26.

Paul Valiry and the Truth of Prose and Poetry 269

6. See Robert Champigny, “Valery on History and the Novel”, in: Yale French Studies, 44 (1970), p. 207-14; Lloyd James Austin, “Valiry’s Views on Literature”, in: Australian Journal of French Studies, 8 (1971), pp. 175-92; W. N. Ince, “Valtry and the Novel,” in:‘Australian Journal of French Studies. 8 (1971), pp. 193-205. A thorough summary of Valtry’s views on the novel is given in Silvio Yeshua, Valiry, le roman el I’mvre li faire (Paris: Lettres ModernesIMinard, 1976). On the relationship between prose and fiction, see also Michel Jarrety, “Valtry et le roman dtplact”, in: Studi francesi, 72 (1980), pp. 440-52, and “La potsie au ptril de la prose”, in: Bulletin des Crudes valiryennes, 3 3 4 (1983), pp. 83-95.

7. W. N. Ince, “Valtry and the Novel,” p. 193. 8. See Lloyd James Austin, “Valiry’s Views on Literature,” though the point is now

a commonplace of Valtry criticism. 9. See Emily Zants, “Valtry and the Modern French Novel,” LEsprit criateur, 7

(1967), pp. 81-90, and Jean Ricardou, “Le Nouveau Roman est-il valtryen?’, in: Entretiens sur Paul Valiry, sous la direction d’kmilie Noulet-Carner (Paris: Mou- ton, 1968), pp. 69-74.

10. Andrt Breton, Manifestes du surrialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 15. 11. Quoted in Judith Robinson, L‘Analyse de [’esprit duns les Cahiers de Valiry,

12. See Judith Robinson, L‘Analyse de I’esprit duns les Cahiers de Valery,

13. On Valtry’s “bovarysme esthitique” in relation to the novel, see Michel Raimond, La Crise du roman: Des lendemaim du Naturalisme aux annies vingr (Pans: Jose Corti, 1966), p. 136.

14. On the place of the reader in Valtry’s aesthetics, see Jean Hytier, Lo Poitique de Valiry (Paris: Armand Colin, 1953), pp. 232-99, and W. N. Ince, The Poetic Theory of Paul ValCry: Imagination and Technique (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1961), pp. W94.

15. On the “poetry of voice” and its source in “L‘etre vivant et pensant”, see Christine Crow, Paul Valiry and the Poetry of Voice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

16. See Mon Faust (0 11, p. 401): “Car il n’est de magie ni dartlQui ne demande quelgue foi”.

pp. 30-1.

pp. 217-19.

Colin Davis. Born 1960. D.Phil. at the University of Oxford on the fiction of Michel Tournier. Formerly Research Fellow at Fitnvilliam College, Cambridge. Currently Lecturer in French and Director of Studies in Modern and Medieval Languages at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge.