Poetry Lyrical Abstraction Paul Valery - The Marine Cemetery, Ill. Mireille Berrard Edition Of 50.

VALERY (Paul) - BERRARD (Mireille, original gouaches by).Le Cimetière marin.Sl, Editions Vialetay, (1965).--------------------------------------------One vol. in folio format (388 x 288 mm) unpaginated, in sheets, under a silent cover with folded flaps of full water-green paper and half-percaline slipcase, smooth spine, title stamped lengthwise in blue ink. Unique edition of only 50 copies. This one, one of the 49 of the numbered edition on Arches paper (among the 10 hors-commerce as such justified in Roman numerals; bearing the autograph signatures of the publisher as well as the artist on the colophon. The work contains 12 superb compositions hand-painted in gouache and signed by Mireille Berrard in graphite.''Mireille Berrard (1930-2005). French painter of Lyrical Abstraction. Her unique style combining gestural painting and music brought her international renown. She is also known in the bibliophile world for her illustrations of Albert Camus, Paul Valéry, Saint-John Perse, Colette, Clavel...'' (Notice taken from the artist's website). Valéry's most famous poem, consisting of 24 sixains, takes the form of a metaphysical, abstract, sensitive and sometimes sensual meditation, while also taking on a dramatic form, presenting in four acts an action in the theatrical sense of the term. The first four stanzas present the sea as an object similar to nothingness (Hegel's "thing"), immutable and unconscious, to which is opposed (stanzas 5 to 9) the mobility of consciousness that exists in time and is fascinated by the desire to be pure thought; the confrontation of the two characters in this drama gives rise (stanzas 9 to 19), with the intervention of the body, to a meditation on death: the refusal of the illusion of the immortality of the soul accompanies the temptation to die and to put an end to the opposition between consciousness and existence. This temptation is avoided in the last five stanzas: rejecting the paradoxes of pure thought, the subject chooses life, bodily movement, poetic creation, action: "The wind rises, we must try to live." It is therefore a reflection on time, the contradiction between consciousness and object, consciousness and body. The final choice goes beyond this contradiction but does not resolve it. However, we must not forget that this is a poem: it was born, by the author's admission, from the obsession with a rhythm, that of the decasyllable, and not from a thought. Valéry even emphasized, perhaps with a desire for paradox, that it was the only one among his poems containing memories of things seen. (Upon his death, the Saint-Charles cemetery was renamed "Marine Cemetery" and he was buried there). Monod II, Manuel de l'amateur de livres illustrés modernes, 10870. Some foxing and stains affecting the slipcase. Light foxing in the body of the work; more marked on the first and last leaves. Otherwise, good condition.