Valéry and the English-speaking World

The links between Valéry, Great Britain and the United States are innumerable: his early visits to England, his passion for London and for Oxbridge, his admiration for Rhodes and brief period of employment in the British South Africa Chartered Company… On a personal level he was in contact with many of the leading figures of his time, either in England or as they passed through Paris. But even more striking was the significance of his reading of the works of many British and American writers, scientists and philosophers, both in the original language and in translation.

Scientific readings played a particularly important part in the development of his 'system' and include a large number from the English-speaking world: in physics Newton, Hamilton, Crookes, Lord Kelvin (whom he knew), Faraday, Maxwell, Gibbs, and later major figures in atomic and quantum physics such as Wilson, Blackett and Dirac, and in relativity, notably Michelson; in astronomy and cosmology Eddington; in mathematics Sylvester and specially Russell; and in biology Darwin. Equally, one notes the impact on his thinking of British philosophy (in particular Bacon and Locke) and his striking role as a precursor of Wittgenstein and the British school of analytical philosophy, as well as the influence on William James in the area of psychology.

In terms of literature and the arts, the list is no less extensive, ranging from his meetings in London and the bustling artistic salons of Paris with Beardsley and Whistler, to his association with Meredith, and later with Joyce and Eliot. His familiarity with English and American literature was extensive, from Shakespeare and Defoe to Poe, Dickens, Stephen Crane, Hopkins, Kipling, Conrad, Wells, Huxley and many others; we see too the interest in Whitney in the field of linguistics, and a keen delight in the paintings of Turner viewed in the galleries.

“…the interplay between Valéry's thought and the whole English-speaking world is a source of constant enrichment to the thinking and the writing that are articulated in the Notebooks”

At the same time, the knowledge of English political and economic theory and practice relative to those of other emerging superpowers such as Germany and Japan, make of Valéry perhaps the strongest bridge between French and English thought in the crucial period of intellectual and social change between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the Second World War.

In all these ways, and many more, it becomes abundantly clear that the interplay between Valéry's thought and the whole English-speaking world is a source of constant enrichment to the thinking and the writing that are articulated in the Notebooks.

© Brian Stimpson