Poems ranging from La Jeune Parque and Le Cimeti re marin to occasional and light verse written as letters to friends, dedications in books, and inscriptions on ladies' fans demonstrate the wide scope of Val ry's lyric preoccupation. The bilingual edition, with David Paul's English translations facing the French texts, includes the autobiographical Recollection, quoted below, and excerpts on poetry, selected and translated from Val ry's notebooks by James Lawler.
Paul Val ry turned to the discipline of poetry during the First World War, to escape from the commotion of a world gone mad. I fashioned myself a poetry, he wrote, that had no other law than to establish for me a way of living with myself, for a part of my days.
Originally published in 1971.
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