Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:55:31.239Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Counter-fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Paul Gifford
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Brian Stimpson
Affiliation:
Roehampton Institute, London
Get access

Summary

Valéry's aversion to the novel is legendary, from his mocking of the paradigmatic arbitrariness of narrative in ‘la marquise sortit à 5h’ (‘the marchioness went out at 5 o'clock’), his reservations on Flaubert and Proust, his sometimes acerbic remarks on Gide's work, to the manifest absence of the genre in an œuvre which nevertheless encompasses effortlessly and unproblematically poetry, drama, dialogue, essay, prose poetry, aphorism and libretto. Yet, from the Conte vraisemblable of 1888 and the prose narratives of the Teste cycle right up to to the posthumous publication of the Histoires brisées, he displays a continuous interest in experimental forms of prose fiction that quite belies this public stance. Throughout the Cahiers, too, Valéry delights in sketching out micro-stories, or ‘sujets’: accounts of dreams, fragments of dialogue, computations of relationships between X, Y and Z, mini-scenarios which play out one moment of an ‘abstract tale’, one set of variations in the continually evolving dialogue between mind and body. There emerges a fascination with exploring the different possibilities of fictional prose from the earliest moments of the Cahiers through the next fifty years; so much so that the voice of the writing ‘I’ which finds expression in various forms of counter-fiction is as persistent – and arguably both more continuous and more subversive – than the poetic voice.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reading Paul Valéry
Universe in Mind
, pp. 138 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×