VALÉRY, Paul (1871-1945)

VALÉRY, Paul (1871-1945)

Autograph quote signed « Paul Valéry »
N.p.n.d., [after 1930], 1 p. in-8° oblong
Fine condition throughout

A beautiful sentence from the poet, summarizing in a few words the ephemerality of human existence

« La plus étrange pensée du monde :
Il y aura des hommes après nous.
Paul Valéry »

The poet composed this sentence at the request of his friend and volunteer secretary Julien-Pierre Monod, who wanted to have it sealed on a bench on his property in Anthy. Valéry sent the sentence to Monod on a “little piece of paper” on August 18, 1930, and copied it elsewhere in his Notebooks: “I am sending to Monod, who is requesting a sentence to be sealed on his bench in Anthy, this: / This is the strangest thought in the world: / ‘There will be men after us.'” Valéry published a first variation of this reflection that same year in the December 10 issue of La Muse française dedicated to him: “Hear the strangest words: / There will be men after us.”
The poet repeated it at the Collège de France on December 17, 1943, in his Course on Poetics. By raising the idea of ​​the perceived immediacy of our lives and their importance, Valéry provokes in us a feeling of strangeness mixed with disquiet, highlighting the relative insignificance of the individual in the face of the duration of humanity. He thus seems to invite us to reflect on our own finitude and to consider that, although fleeting, life and the world will continue their course.