Collected Verse

One of the preeminent intellectuals of modern French culture, Valéry is widely considered one of the country's greatest poets of the twentieth century. Following a flurry of sonnets in his late teens, he abruptly abandoned verse for twenty years. If the publication of The Young Fate in 1917 won him immediate and immense acclaim, his status as the outstanding poet of the era was firmly consolidated with the Album of Early Verse and Charms with its beautiful meditation on mortality, 'The Graveyard by the Sea', considered one of the finest poems in French. A classical voice in an era of avant-garde modernism, Valéry's often sensuous work was inspired by mysticism, myth, the Mediterranean, and above all passionate love. This bilingual edition brings together for the first time the complete verse with many unknown and previously unpublished poems taken from his abundant correspondence, which offers intimate insight into a private side of the writer.