What happens ilJ the mind of a writer

when he is writing? The painter while

he is painting? The composer as he develops a theme? The scientist when he
evolves a new hypothesis?
Some of the greatest minds in the world ex.
plain, -in this challenging volume, the com.
bination of factors that unite to produce
creative achievements in literature, paint.
ing, philosophy, biology, mathematics, and
psychiatry.
This delightful and provocative symposium,
which has been edited by a distinguished
scholar and critic, is stimulating for all who
work in creative fields, or enjoy studying
them.
"I would lik. to get a dozen copies of The Creative
Process, edited by Brewster. Ghiselin, so that they
may be given-to our key thinking .Iite at N.B.C."
-Sylveste. L. Weaver,
Forme. President National Broadcasting Company

.~

PAUL VALERY

Paul Valery : THE COURSE IN POETICS:

FIRST LESSON

~Y FIRST CONCERN must be to explain the word "Poetics"

whic~ I have restored to its quite primitive sense, not that

now In use., It came to I?ind and seemed to me the only proper
o~e to designate the kind of study I propose to carry on in
thIS Course.
This term is ordinarily taken to mean any account or collection of rules, conventions, or precepts dealing with the
composition of lyric or dramatic poems, or even the making
of verse. But we may find that the word has grown far enough
o~t of use in this sense, along with the thing it names, to be
gIven another.
~ot very long ago,. all the arts were subject, each according
to Its nature, to certam obligatory forms or modes imposed on
all works of the same genre; these could be and had to be
learned, as we do the syntax of a language. It was not thought
that the effect a work might produce, however powerful or
happy, was enough to justify the work and assure it a universal
value ..The fact did not carry with it the right. It had been
r.ecogmzed very early that there were, in each of the arts, practIces to be recommended, observances and restrictions which
b~st favo~ the success of an artist's purpose, and which it was to
hIS own mterest to know and respect.
. But gradually, and on the authority of very great men, the
Idea of a sort of legality crept in and took the place of what
had been,. at fi~st, recommendations of empirical origin. Reason put ngor mto the rules. They were expressed in precise
forI?ulas; the critic armed himself with them; and this paradOXical result followed, that an artistic discipline which set
up re~soned difficulties in -the way of the artist's impulses
came mto great and lasting favor because of the extreme facility it offered in judging and classifying works, by simple reference to a code or well defined canon.
.These formal rules offered a further facility to those who
wlsh~~ to pr9duce works. Very strict and even very severe
conditIOns reheve the artist of a number of the most delicate
decisions and of many responsibilities in the matter of form
while they sometimes excite him to discoveries to which com:
plete freedom could never have led him.
92

J
,j

j
j

93

But whether we deplore or rejoice at the fact the era of

authority in the arts is rather long since past a~d the word
"Poetics" now arouses in us scarcely more than the notion
of troublesome and old-fashioned rules. For that reason I
have thought it possible to recover the word in a sense derived
from its etymology, although I have not dared to pronounce
it l!0~etics, as the ph~siologists do when they speak of hematopOlettc or galactopoi etic functions. Rather it is in short the
quite simple notion of making that I wish to express . Th~
making, the poiein. that I wish to consider is the kind that
r~sul, ts in some finished work ; J shall shor,tl y limit it to tho/;
, ''''
!cmd of works yve have a,gree~ to call works of the mind. ,1 Al
mean those which the mmd lIkes to make for its own use ., j
emp!oying to that end any physical means that can serve. '
Like the simple act of which I have just spoken, any work
may .or may not lead us to meditate on the process of its
creatIOn, mayor may not give rise to a more or less pronounced, more or less exacting attitude of inquiry which
"
makes of creation itself a problem.
. SU,ch a study does not force itself upon us. We may think it
IS vam, and we may even consider my claim fanciful. Furthermore: certain minds.will find it not only vain but harmful; and
they may even owe It to themselves to find it so. One can im, a&ine for exa~ple . th a ~ ~ Roe! may legitimately fear that he
~1~!It underm~ne hiS ongmal powers, or his immediate productlVlty, by ma~mg an analysis of them. He instinctively refuses
t~ plumb their depths otherwise than through the exercise of
~IS art; he refuses to master them by demonstrative reason. It
IS credible that our simplest act, our most familiar gesture
could not be performed , that the least of our powers might
become an. obstacle to us if we had to bring it before the mind
and know It thoroughly in order to exercise it.
Achilles cannot win over the tortoise if he meditates on
space and time.
On the contrary, however, it may happen that we take such
keen interes~ in this ,inquiry and th at we attach such ~igh importance to ItS purSUIt, that we may be brought to conSider with
~ore satisfaction, and even with more passion, the act of makm g than the thing made.
It is,;m this point, gentJemen, that my undertaking must
ne~essanly be dlstmgUlshed from that carried on by Literary
History on the one hand, and on the other by textual and
literary Criticism .
Literary History looks for the outwardly verified circumstances i~ which wo~ks were composed, appeared, and produced their effects. It mforms us about authors, about the vicissitudes of their life and their work , in so far as these are visible
things which have left traces that may be discovered, .co-

94

ordinated, and interpreted. It collects traditions and documents.

I do not need to remind you with what erudition and orig~
inality of views such a course was professed from this very
i
chair by your eminent colleague M. Abel Lefranc. But a l
knowledge of authors and their times, a study of the succes.
sion of literary phenomena can only excite us to conjecture;
what may have happened in the minds of those who have done
J
what was necessary to get themselves inscribed in the annals of
.'~
the History of Letters. If they succeeded in doing so, it was
through the concurrence of two conditions which may always
j
be considered as independent: one is necessarily Jhe prodl,l<::::
tion of the work itself, the other iS,the ,production of a certain!.,. .
-value in the work by those who have known and liked it once'it is produced, those who have enforced its reputation and
assured its transmission, its conservation, its ulterior life.
I have just pronounced the words "value" and "production."
I shall dwell on them for a moment.
If we would undertake to explore the domain of the creative
mind, we must not be afraid to stand, at first, on the most general considerations, since they are the ones that will allow us to
advance without having to retrace our steps too often, and will
offer us the greatest number of analogies, that is the greatest
number of approximate expressions for the description of facts
and ideas which most often, by their very nature, escape any
attempt at direct definition. That is why I call attention to borrowing a few words from Economics: I shall perhaps find it
convenient to assemble under the single terms production and
;1
producer the various activities and persons that will occupy us,
if we wish to treat what they have in common without dis\
tinguishing between their different kinds. It will be no less convenient, without specifying whether we are speaking of reader
I
or hearer or spectator, to combine all these participants in
works of all kinds under the economic term consumer.
IJ
As for the notion of value, we are well aware that in the
world of the mind it plays a role of the first order, comparable
to the one it plays in the economic world, although spiritual
value is much more subtle than economic since it is bound up
with needs infinitely more varied, and not measurable as the
needs of our physiological life are. The Iliad is still known, and
gold has remained for so many centuries a more or less simple
but rather remarkable and generally venerated substance, for
the reason that rarity, inimitability, and a few other properties
distinguish gold and the Iliad, making of them privileged
objects, standards of value.
Without insisting on my economic comparison, it is clear
that the idea of work, and such ideas as the creation and accu-

95

PAUL VALERY

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

mulation of wealth, or supply and demand, occur quite naturally in the domain that concerns us.
As much by their similarity as by their different uses, these
notions under the same names remind us that in two orders
of f cts WICi) seem very dis[,:1ct frm 'n~ ,.n ther, pro,)lems
of the relation of persons to their social milieu arise. Besides,
just as there is an economic analogy, and for the same reason,
there is also a political analogy between the phenomena of
organized intellectual life and those of public life. There is
a whole policy of intellectual power, an internal policy (quite
inte 121. of course), and en f" ~n,'
) icy, t
latter faLing
withi'l the province of Literary History, of which it should
form one of the principal objects.
Politics and economics thus generalized are notions that,
from the first moment we look at the world of the mind, when
we still might expect to consider it a system perfectly isohble
during th~ phase of creating its works, are necessary ntions,
and seem profoundly present in most of the mind's creations,
and always hovering in the vicinity of its acts.
At the very heart of the schoh'r's or artist's thought, even
the one most absorbed in his search, who seems most confined
to his own sphere and face to face with what is most self and
mos t imperscnal, th'e["c is present some stnmge antici: :ition of
the external rew ions t~ be provoked bv the work now in the
rna' inp< it i~ d:f"h,llt for a man to be alone.
The effect c" this presence can ~lways be assumed, without
fear of error; but it may be combined so subtly with other
factors of the \Fork , s~metimes so well disguised, that it is
almost impossible to isolate it.
Nc-vertheless, we know that the real meaning of a certain
choie or a certs.in+ eff0rt on the part of a creator often lies
out' 31" the werk itself, and is the res'.lit of a more or less
cone iOlls concern with the effC'ct to be produced and with its
con,?quenc~s for th(' producer. Thus, while it is at work, the
mini' cnstantly goin~ and cominq fro'll-Se1ftoOther-'what
ifs irme,m("d !lei'll!: pr:>duces is rnA ::f1ed by a pecull'ar ~ware
nes:. of th' judrcment of others. Therefore, in our relk,;)l on
a work we m'y take one or the other of these two mu u"lly
exc' '~ive attitudes. If we mean to proceed with as much
rig-" as such a suhject <'Paws, we must rec::uire ours+/es to
distill'.-uish ven c8rfl'11 betwf'e ill"ectig2!io 1 into the crea- _
tion of a war' 2.W' study of the PF01'rtion of its value that is
the effects it m' y produce hen~ or t" "re, in such and such a
head , at such 2nd such 3 time. To demonstrJte t',is point it
is sLfficiFnt to remark that what we can redly know or '(SinK
we know, in any domnin, is not'1ing: else than what we can
eit,her OhS"TI'P .or do, oU'"selves. and that it is impos~ible" ' io
bnng together m one and the same condition, and in one and
1

PAUL VALERY

96

97

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

the same attention, the observation of the mind that produces

the work and the observation of the mind that produces a
certain value in the work. No eye is capable of observing both
these functions at once; producer and consumer are two
essentially separate systems. The work is for one the terminus,
for the other the origin of developments which may be as
foreign as you please to one another.
We must conclude that any judgment that announces a
relation in three terms between the producer, the work and
the consumer-and judgments of this kind are not rare in
criticism-is an illusory judgment which can have no meaning
and which is immediately destroyed by the slightest reflection.
We can only consider th'e work's relation to its producer, or on
the other hand its relation to the one whom it affects once
it is made. The action of the first and the reaction of the second can never meet. The idea each has of the work is incompatible with the other's.
Hence arise very frequent surprises, a few of which are
advantageous. There are mistakes that are creative. There are
many effects-and among them the most powerful-which
require the absence of any direct correspondence between the
two activities concerned. A certain work, for example, is the
fruit of long labor; it combines a large number of trials, repetitions, rejections, and choices. It has taken months, even
years of reflection, and it may also presuppose the experience
and attainments of a whole lifetime. Now, the ~ffect of this
work may take no more than a few moments to declare itself. A glance will suffice to appreciate a considerable monument, to feel its shock. In two hours all the calculations of
the tragic poet, all the labor he has spent in ordering the effects
of his play, shaping every line of it one by one; or again,
all the harmonic and orchestral combinations contrived by the
composer; or all the meditations of the philosopher, the long
years he has put into curbing, controlling, withhol~ing his
thought until he could perceive and accept its definitive order,
all these acts of faith, all these acts of choice, all these mental
transactions finally reach the stage of the finished work, to
strike, astonish, dazzle or disconcert the mind of the Other,
who is suddenly subjected to the excitement of this enormous
charge of intellectual labor. All this makes a disproportionate
act.
One may (very roughly, of course) compare this effect to
the fall, in a few seconds, of a mass which had been carried
up, piece by piece, to the top of a tower without regard to the
time or the number of trips.
It is in this way that we get the impression of superhuman
power. But as you know, the effect does not always come off;
it sometimes happens, in intellectual mechanics, that the tower

is too high, or the mass too great, and we get a negative result,
or none at all.
Let us suppose, however, that the big effect comes off. Those
persons who have felt it, those who have been, if you will,
overwhelmed by its power and perfections, by the large number of lucky strokes, the piling up of happy surprises, cannot,
arid in fact must not imagine all the internal labor, the possibilities discarded, the long process of picking out suitable
components, the delicate reasoning whose conclusions appear
to be reached by magic, in a word, the amount of inner life
treated by the chemist of the creative mind, or sorted out of
mental chaos by some Maxwellian demon; and' so those same
persons are led to imagine a being of great powers, capable of
working all these wonders with no more effort than it takes
to do anything at all.
What the work produces in us, then, is incommensurable
with our own powers of immediate production.~esides, certain elements of the work which have come to the author by
some happy chance may be attributed to a Singular virtue of
his mind. In this way the consumer becomes a producer in his
turn: at first, a producer of the value of the work; and next,
because he immediately applies the principal of causality
(which at bottom is only a na'ive expression of one of the
mind's modes of production), b.e becomes a producer of the
value of the imaginary being who made the thing he admires.'
Perhaps if great men were as conscious as they are great
there would be no great men in their own eyes.
.
Thus, and this is what I have been coming to, this example,
although very special, shows us that for works to have their
effects, the producer and the consumer must each be independent or ignorant of the other's thoughts and conditions; The
secrecy and surprise which tactitians often recommend in their
writings are here naturally assured.
To sum up, when we speak of works of the mind, we mean
either the terminus of a certain activity or the origin ofa cerlain other activity, and that makes two orders of incommunicable effects, each of which requires of us a special adaptation
incompatible with the other.
What remains is the work itself, as a tangible thing: This
is a third consideration, quite different from the other two.
We shall now regard a work as an object, as pure object,
that is to say without putting into it any more of ourselves than
may apply indifferently to all objects: an attitude clearly
marked by the absence of any production of value.
What can we do to this object which, this time, can do nothing to us? But we can do something to it. We can measure it
according to its s[l8cial or temporal nature; we can count the
words in a text or the syllables in a line; we can confirm that a

98

99

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

PAUL VALERY

certain book appeared at a certain date; that a certain picture

is a copy of a certain other; that there is a half line of Lamartine to be found in Thomas, or that a certain page of Victor
Hugo has, ever since 1645, belonged to an obscure Father
Francis. We may note that a certain piece of reasoning is a
fallacy, that this sonnet is incorrect; that the drawing of that
arm is in defiance of anatomy, and that a certain use of words
is strange. All this is the result of operations that may be
classed as purely material operations since they amount to
ways of superimposing the work, or fragments of the work,
upon some model.
This treatment of works of the mind does not distinguish
them from all other possible works. It places them and keeps
them in the order of things, and imposes upon them a defined
existence. That is the point to remember:
All tharwe can define is at once set off tram the produdng
mind, in opposition to it. The mind turns whatever it defines
into matter it can work on, or a tool it can work with.
- Whatever it has clearly defined, the mind places out of its
own reach, and in so doing, shows that it knows itself and that
it trusts only what is not itself.
These distinctions in the notion of a work which I have just
proposed to you, and which divide it, not in any search for
subtlety but by the easiest sort of reference to immediate observation, aim to bring out the idea which is now going to
serve to introduce my analysis of the production of works of
the mind.
All that I have said so far may be condensed into these
few words: works of the mind exist only in action. Beyond
this action, what remains is only an object that has no particular relation to the mind. Transport the statue you admire
among a people sufficiently different from your own, and it
becomes an insignificant stone. The Parthenon is only a small
quarry of marble. And when the text of a poet is used as a
collection of grammatical difficulties, or examples, it ceases at
once to, be a work of the mind, since the use to which it is put
is entirely foreign to the conditions of its creation, and since in
addition it is denied the consumer value that gives meaning
to such a work.
A poem on paper is nothing more than a piece of writing
that may be used for anything that can be done with a piece
of writing. aut among all its possibilities there is one, and only
one, which can finally put this text under conditions that will
gIve it the force and form of action. ~ poem is. a discourse
Q1~.trequires and sustains continuous connection between the
1I.Olce that is and the voice that is coming and must come. And
this voice must be such that it seems prescribed and excites
the affective state of which the text itself is the unique verbal

expression. Take away the voice and the voice required, and
everything becomes arbitrary. The poem is changed into a
sequence of signs held together only by the fact that they
have been traced on paper one after another.
For these reasons I shall not cease to condemn the detestable practice of misusing those works best fitted to create and
develop a feeling for poetry among young people, the practice
of treating poems as things, of chopping them up as if their
composition were "1othing, of allowing if not requiring them to
be recited in thl' n'ay you have all heard, to be used as memory or spelling tests; in a word, of abstracting the essence of
these works, that which makes them what they are and 'not
something else, that which gives them their own quality and
necessity.
It isJh~,1?,e.[fonU,!lnc:(!of~):l~ poem ,;"hich is the poem. WithourtIi1s, tfiese rows of curiously assembled words are but inexplicable fabrications.
Works of the mind, poems or other, can be related only to
that which gives birth to that which gave them birth themselves, and to absolutely nothing else. No doubt, divergencies
may arise among the poetic interpretations of a poem, among
the impressions and meanings, or rather among the resonances
provoked in one or another reader by the action of the work.
But now this banal remark, upon reflection, must take on an
importance of the first order: Jhe possible diversity of legitimate effects of a work is the very mark of the mind. It corresponds, moreover, to the plurality of ways that occurred to
the author during his labor of production. The fact is that
every act of the mind itself is always somehow accompanied
by: a ~ertain more of less perceptible atmosphere of indetermIOatlOn.
... I must beg you to excuse this expression. I do not find a
better.
Let us imagine ourselves in a state of transport from a work
of art, one of those works which compel us to desire them all
the more, the more we possess them, or the more they possess
us. We now find ourselves divided between feelings arising in
remarkable alternation and contrast. We feel on the one hand
that the work acting upon us suits us so well that we cannot
i~agine it as different. In certain cases of supreme satisfaction, we even feel that we are being transformed in some profound way, becoming someone whose sensibility is capable
of such fullness of delight and immediate comprehension. But
we feel no less strongly, and as it were through some quite
ot~er sens~, that ~he ,PheI?omenon which causes and develops
thIS state 10 us, lOflicts Its power upon us, might not have
been, and even ought not to have been, and is in fact improbable.

"-'

100

"

"-"./:"'"

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

All the while that our enjoyment or our joy is real, x:eal as
a fact, the existence and formation of the means (that. IS, the
work which generates our sensation) seem to us accld~ntal.
Its existence appears to be the result of some ex~r~or?1Oary
chance or some sumptuous gift of fortune, and It IS 10 thiS
(let us' not forget to remark) that a particular analogy may
be found between the effect of a work of art and that of c:ertain aspects of nature: some ge.ological fe~ture, or a fieet10g
.
combination of light and vap,?r 10 ~he evemng sky:
At times we are unable to Imagme that a certam man, hke
one of us, could be the author of so extr~ordinary a .bles~i!1g,
and ,the glory we give him is the eXprel!&lQIJ ,Q!, OUJlRaQI!!ty.
- But Whatever details may go into those games or dramas
played in the mind of the producer, all ~ust ~e brought to
completion in the visible work and find 10 thiS very fact a
final and absolute determination. This end is the outcome of
asuccession ()f inner changes which
rusordered as you
"pte'ase but which must necessarily be reconciled at the moment when the hand moves to write, under one unique command, whether happy or not. Now this hand, this exterJ.?-al
act, necessarily resolves for better or wors~ that. state of 10determination of which I spoke. The produc1Og m10d seems to
elsewhere, seeking to impress 'up~n its work ~ character
quite different from its own. In a finished wor.k, It hopes to
escape the instability, the incoherence, t~e 1O~onsequence
which it recognizes in itself and which constitute ItS most frequent condition. To that end, it counters interruptions from
every direction and of every ~ind .which .it must. u~dergo ~t
every moment. It absorbs an.1Ofimte vane.ty of. 1OCldents; It
,rejects any substitutions of Image, seftsatIon, l~pulse, an?
idea that cut across other ideas. It struggles agamst 'Yhat. It
is ()bliged to accept, produce, or express; in short, .a~a1Ost Its
own nature and its accidental and instantaneous activity.
,
' " P~ri!li-jts...me.dH.l!t!9.!L!U1U!E~, ~round. its own c~!l.!~'{he , ..
' leasf thing is enougn toruven
Bernara observes: U'ltorat'iiS'''ifflp~tJ'ir-e(JgifdtToiieiff.F;ve'fnh the best h~ad, contradiction is the rule, correct sequence is the exc~ptlon. ~nd
this ,very correctness is a logician's artifice, an artifice whl~h,
like all others which the mind contrives against itself, consists
in giving material shape to the elements of thought, ~hich it
calls "concepts," turning them into cir~les and dom~1Os,. thus
conferring upon these intellectual objects a duration 1Od~
pendent of the vicissitudes of the mind; for logic after all IS
, only a speculation on the permanence of notations.
aut here is a very astonishing situation: the dispersion alWays threatening the mind; contributes almost .as iI?portantly , \
fo. the production of. the w,?rk ~s concentra~)(;m Itsel~. 1.:~e,..
~1Od at..lY2~ struggling agamst Its own mobility, agamst Its

ate-as

be

u.-sr.

PAUL VALERY

101

own constitutional restlessness and diversity, against the dissipation or natural decay of any specialized attitude, on the I
other hand ~~Qmp\l~ijQl$! reso~H:ces.in.tp.iLY~Ey'" c9p.<!t~i~n,\(/
~ The 1Ostability, incoherence, inconsequence or wnlcn r
spoke, which trouble and limit the mind in any sustained effort
of construction or composition, are just as surely also treasures of possibility, whose riches it senses in its vicinity at the
very moment when it is consulting itself. These are the mind's
reserves, from which anything may come, its reasons for
hoping that the solution, the signal, the image, or the .missing .. ,_ '
word may be nearer at hand than it seems. The m10d Can (." i
3lways feel in the darkness a~mnd it the truth or the decision .,)
it is lookjni for .which". it. k nws to be at ~he ~rcy::orihe
Slightest thing, of that v~ meaningless disorercfi seemea
to dIvert It and @.JiisliJt'.maeIW[ay. - -- - .------.--- -SOmetimes what we wish to see appear to our minds (even a
simple memory) is like some precious object we might hold
and feel of through a wrapping of cloth that hides it from our
eyes. It is and is not ours, and the least incident may reveal
it. Sometimes we invoke what ought to exist, having defined it
by its conditions. We demand it, being faced with some peculiar combination of elements all equally imminent to the mind
and yet no one of which will stand out and satisfy our need.
We beg of our minds some show of inequality. We hold up
our desire before the mind as one places a magnet over a composite mixture of dust from which a particle of iron will suddenly jump out. In the ordeLQ.Lm~Jltal things, there s~~IP-Jo
b.,e....c.ertain .very my~t~p()l!.~ .relati9.11.s.b.l;.t~,~.!LJ1i~~,.ag.~ir.g" q!!4. '
the eveJJ1. I do not wish to say that the mind's desire creates
a"'" sort of field, much more complex than a magnetic field,
which might have the power to call up what suits us. This
image is only one way of expressing a fact of observation to
which I shall return later. But however clear, evident, forceful, or beautiful the spiritual event may be which terminates
our expectation, completes our thought, or removes our doubt,
still nothing is irrevocable. Here, the moment to come has
absolute power over what the preceding moment produces.
That is because the mind when reduced to its own sole sub~tance does not have the power to finish, and absolutely cannot bind itself by itself.
When we say that our opinion on a certain point is defini- .
tive, we say this in order to make it so: we have recourse to
others. The sound of our voice is much more assuring to us
than the firm inner remark which our voice pretends, aloud,_
that we have formed. When we think we have completed a -1
certain thought, we never feel sure that we could come back "
to it without either improving or spoiling what we had finished. Itjs in tbis that~ind is 9jyi~~est

102

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

.itself as soon as it sets to work. Every work requires acts ?f

will (although it always indllifes a number of components.m
which what we call the will has no part). But when our wIll,
our expressed power, tries to turn upon the mind itself. and
make it obey the result is always a simple arrest, the mamtenance or perhaps the renewal of certain conditions.
~ , . In fact, we can act directly only upon the freedom of the
mind's processes. We can lessen the degree of that freedom,
but as for the rest, 1 mean as for the changes ~nd substi~utio~s
still possible under our constraint, w~ must Simply walt until
what we desire appears, because that IS all we can do. We have
no means of getting exactly what we wish from ourselves.
. For that exactness or desired result, is of the same mental
substance as our des~e, and it may be they int~rfere with e~ch
other in acting simultaneously. We know that It happe~s fairly
often that some desired solution comes to us after an mterval
of relaxed interest in the problem, as it were a reward for
the freedom given to the mind.
.,
.
What I have just said, although It ~ppbes more especially
to the producer, may also be observed m the consumer of the
work. In the latter the production of value, for example the
comprehension, the interest aroused, the effort .he n:ay exp.en?
to possess the work more completely, would give nse to similar observations.
.
Whether I fasten on the page I must write or the ope.I.wlsh
to understand in both cases I enter upon a phase of diminIshed
freedom. But 'in both cases the restriction of my freedom ml;ly
give rise to two quite opposite results. Son:etiI?es my .task Itself excites me to pursue it; far from resentmg It as a dlff!.culty
or a departure from the most natural .course o~ my mmd, I
give myself to it and advance in such, lively fas~lOn ~lonJl ~he
path of my purpose that the sensatIOn of fatigue IS dimInished, up to the moment when ~uddenly it actually beclouds
my thought, shuffles the deck of Ideas to set up agaIn .the n?rmal disorder of short-term exchanges, the state of disperSive
and restful indifference.
'
At other times, however, constraint is .uppermost; the
maintenance of direction is more and more difficult, the labor
involved becomes more perceptible than its result, the means
are opposed to the end, and the tension o~ the mind must be
fed from resources more and more precanous and n:ore and
more unlike the ideal object whose power a~d actIOn t~ey
must maintain, at the expense of fatigue rapidly becomIng
unbearable. That is the great contrast between two uses of the
mind. It will serve to show you that the care I have taken to
specify that works must be considered o~ly as a~ts of production or consumption, was entirely conslst~nt Wlt~ what may
be observed; while, on the other hand, It furnishes us the

PAUL VALERY

103

means of making a very important distinction between works

of the mind.
Among these works, usage has create? a cat~g~ry called
works of art. It is not very easy to define thiS term, If Indeed we
need to define it. In the first place, I see nothing in the production of works which clearly forces me to create a category
for the work of art. I find everywhere, in our minds, attenti~n,
tentative efforts, unexpected clarity and dark passages, Improvisations and trials, or very hurried repetitions. On every
hearth of the mind there are both fire and ashes; prudence and
imprudence, method and its oppos~te; chanc~ in a thousand
forms. Artist....SCholaLS..4U..ru:e.aJ.ike.J!l1he g~~ili..o.f.1b,e_lli.ange
life of thoUibt. It may be said that at, any particular. m,oment
the functional difference between mInds at work IS Imperceptible. But if we turn our .attenti<?n to the effe~ts of, works
already finished, we discover In certaIn ones a partIculanty th~t
groups them, differentiates them from all others. A certaIn
work taken by itself may be divided into parts that are wholes,
each able to create a desire and satisfy it.The work offers us in
each of its parts, food and appetite at once. It continually
awakens in us both thirst and a fountain. In return for the freedom we give up, it rewards us by making us love the captivity
it imposes upon us and by giving us the feeling of a .delightful
kind of immeq.iate knowledge; all the while, expendmg to our
great satisfaction our own energy, which it evokes in a w.ay so
compatible with the highest perfor.mance of our ,orga~llc .resources that the sensation of effort Itself becomes Intoxlcatmg
and we feel ourselves possessors in being magnificently possessed.
So the more we give, the more we wish to give, all the while
thinking we are receiving. The illusion of a,cting, ~xpressing,
discovering, understanding, solving, mastenng, ammates us.
All these effects, which are sometimes prodigious, are quite
instantaneous, like everything that plays upon our sensibility;
they attack directly the strategic points command in? our affective life, and through it make us intellectually available; they
accelerate, retard, or even regularize our various functi?lls
whose accord or discord gives us in the end all the pOSSible
modulations on the sensation of living, from flat calm up to
tempest.
The very tone of the 'cello, with many people, exercises real
visceral persuasion. There are words whose frequency in an
author's work reveals to us that for him they are endowed with
far more resonance, and thus with positively creative power,
than they are in general. This is one of those personal valuations, those great values for one alone, which certainly playa
very handsome role in those productions of the mind in which
singularity is an element of the first importance.

104

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

These considerations will serve to clarify somewhat the constitution of poetry, which is rather mysterious. It is strange that
one should exert himself to formulate a discourse which must
simultaneously obey perfectly incongruous conditions: musical, rational, significant, and suggestive; conditions which require a continuous and repeated connection between rhythm
, and syntax, between sound and sense.
These parts are without any conceivable relation to one another. Yet we must give the illusion of their profound intimacy.
What good is all this? The observance of rhythms, rimes, and
verbal melody hampers the direct movement of my thought,
and in fact keeps me from saying what I wish . But what
do I wish to say? That is the question.
i Ii
The answer is that in this case we have to wish what we must
, I wish in order that thought, language and its conventions, on
tpe one hand, 3,11 borrowed from the life around us, and on
the other, the rhythm and accents of the voice, which are
directly personal things, may be brought into accord; and this
accord requires mutual sacrifices, the most remarkable of
wJ1ich is the
that must be volun:~",JDade.b, tboug1it.
SOme day shall explaffi now fills change shows in the language of poets, and how there is a poetic language in which
words are no longer the words of free practical usage. They
are no longer held together by the same attractions; they are
charged with two different values operating simultaneously
and of equivalent importance: their sound and their instantaneous psychic effect. They remind us then of those complex
, numbers in geometry; the coupling of the phonetic variable
with the sematic variable creates problems of extension and
convergence which poets solve blindfold-but they solve them
(and that is the essential thing), from time to time . . . From
Time to Time, that is the point! There lies the uncertainty,
there lies the disparity between persons and times. That is our
- ' '''!lPital fact. I shall have to return to it at length; for all a~t,

PAUL VALERY

,rie

!{,

=~~:~~i:1l!i,stsjP-.9.~~p.ding,Q~~ill-l!B.iii~~t1~9

All I have Just outlined in this summary examination of the

general notion of a work must lead me at last to indicate the
point of view I have chosen, from which to eJqJlore this immense domain, the making of works of the mind. We have
tried, in a few moments, to give you an idea of the complexity
of these questions, where it may be said that everything happens at once, where what is deepest in man is combined with a
number of external factors.
All may be summed up in this formula: that in tlle..malW:l,g
~ wQrk.~A a~t omes. i!!::~ontact ~tb. tbeiDde.DIlabJ.e" .
A voluntary act, which in everyone of the arts is very complex, often requiring long labor, the most absorbed attention,

, I

105

and very precise knowledge, must adapt itself, in the making of

art, to a state of being in itself quite irreducible, to a kind of
definite expression, which does not refer to any localizable object, but which may itself be determined, and achieved by a system of uniformly determined acts; all this resulting in a work
whose effect must be to set up an analogous state of being in
someone else-I do not say a similar state (since we shall
never know about that)-Qut one analogous tothe initial state
of the producer.
'
Thus, on the one hand the indefinable, on the other hand a
necessarily finite act; on the one hand a state, sometimes a
single sensation producing value and impulse, a state whose
sole character is to correspond to no finite term of our experience; on the other hand an act, that is to say the essence of
determination, since an act is a miraculous escape from the
closed world of the possible into the universe of fact; and this
act is frequently produced despite the mind with all its precise
knowledge-arising from the chaotic as Minerva arose fully
armed from the mind of Jupiter, an old image still full of
meaning!
With the artist, it happens in fact-when the circumstances
are favorable-that the inner impulse to production gives him,
at once and inseparably, the motive, the immediate external
aim, and the means and technical requirements for the act. In
general a creative situation is set up in which there is a more
or less lively exchange between requirements, knowledge, intentions, means, all mental and instrumental things, all the
elements of action, in one act whose stimulus is not situated in
the world where the aims of ordinary action are found, and
consequently can furnish us with no foresight that may determine the formula of acts to be accomplished in order to locate
it with certainty.
And it was when I finally came to conceive this quite re- '
markable fact (though seldom remarked, it seems) I mean the
performance of an act, as the outcome, the issue, the final
determination of a state which is inexpressible in finite terms \
(that is to say which exactly cancels its causal sensation), that!
I resolved to adopt as the general form of this Course the most'
general possible type of human action. I thought it best at all
costs to set a simple line, a sort of geodetic path through the
observations and ideas that surround this innumerable subject,
knowing that in a study which has not before, to my knowledge, been taken up in its entirety, it is illusory to seek any intrinsic order, any line of development involving no repetition
which would permit us to list problems according to the
progression of some variable, for such a variable does bot exist.
When the mind is in question, everything is in question; all
is disorder, and every reaction against that disorder is of the

106

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

same kind as itself. For the fact i~ that dis.or~er is t~e co~di
tion of the mind's fertility: it contaInS the mmd s promise, smce
its fertility depends on the unexpected rather than the expected,
depends rather on what we do not know, and. because we. do
not know it, than what we know. ~o~ ~ould It be otherwls~?
The domain I am trying to survey IS hmltless, but the whole IS
reduced to human proportions at once !f we take care to stick
to our own experience, to the observations we have ourselves
made to the means we have tested. 1 try never to forget that
every' man is the measure of things.
Translated by Jackson Mathews
"The Course in Poetics: First Lesson," revised ~or this publication
by Jackson Mathews, from the Southern Review, Wmter, 1940,
Volume 5, No.3.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

107

touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from
what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract thing,
from all that is of the brain only, from all that is not a fountain
jetting from the entire hopes, memories, and sensations of the
body. Its morality is personal, knows little of any general law,
has no blame for Little Musgrave, no care for Lord Barnard's
house, seems lighter than a breath and yet is hard and heavy,
for if a man is not ready to face toil and risk, and in all gaiety
of heart, his body will grow unshapely and his heart lack the
wild will that stirs desire. It approved before all men those
that talked or wrestled or tilted under the walls of Urbino, or
sat in the wide window-seats discussing all things, with love
ever in their thought, when the wise Duchess ordered all, and
the Lady Emilia gave the theme.
Preface to THE KING OF THE GREAT CLOCK TOWER

William Butler Yeats: THREE PIECES ON THE

CREATIVE PROCESS
THE THINKING OF THE BODY

who are a terror to children and an

ignominious sight in l?vers' eye~ , all t.hose b';1tts of a traditional
humour where there IS somethIng of the Wisdom of peasants,
are mathematicians, theologians, lawyers, men of s~ience . of
various kinds. They have followed some abstract revene, which
stirs the brain only and needs that only, and have therefore
stood before the looking-glass without pleasure and never
known those thoughts that shape the I.ines of the. body for
beauty or animation, and wake a deslfe for . praise or for
display.
There are two pictures of Venice side by si~e in the house
where I am writing this, a Canaletto that has httle but careful
drawing and a not very emotional pleasure in clean bright air,
and a F;anz Francken, where the blue water, that in the other
stirs one so little, can make one long to plunge into the green
depth where a cloud shadow falls. Neither painting could move
us at all, if our thought did not rush out to the edg~s of our
flesh, and it is so with all good art, whether the ~Ictory of
Samothrace which reminds the soles of our feet of SWiftness, or
the Odyssey that would send us out under the salt wind, or the
young horsemen on the Parthenon, that se;m happier th~n our
boyhood ever was, and in our boyhood s way. Art bids us

THOSE LEARNED MEN

A YEAR AGO I found that I had written no verse for two years;
I had never been so long barren; 1 had nothing in my head, and
there used to be more than 1 could write. Perhaps Coole Park
where 1 had escaped from politics, from all that Dublin talked
of, when it was .shut, shut me out from my theme; or did the
subconscious drama that was my imaginative life end with
its owner? but it was more likely that I had grown too old for
poetry. I decided to force myself to write, then take advice. In
'At Parnell's Funeral' I rhymed passages from a lecture 1 had
given in America; a poem upon mount Meru came spontaneously, but philosophy is a dangerous theme; then I was
barren again. 1 wrote the prose dialogue of The King of The
Great Clock Tower that I might be forced to make lyrics for
its imaginary people. When I had written all but the last lyric 1
went a considerable journey partly to get the advice of a poet
not of my school who would, as he did some years ago, say
what he thought. 1 asked him to dine, tried to get his attention.
'I am in my sixty-ninth year' I said, 'probably I should stop
writing verse, I want your opinion upon some verse I have
written lately.' 1 had hoped he would ask me to read it but he
would not speak of art, or of literature, or of anything related
to them. 1 had however been talking to his latest disciple and
knew that his opinions had not changed: Phidias had corrupted
sculpture, we had nothing of true Greece but certain Nike dug
up out of the foundations of the Parthenon, and that corruption
ran through all our art; Shakespeare and Dante had corrupted
literature, Shakespeare by his too abounding sentiment, Dante
by his compromise with the Church.
He said apropos of nothing 'Arthur Balfour was a scoundrel,'
and from that on would talk of nothing but politics. All the