This work represents a successive reading of thirteen handwritten versions of Paul Valéry's famous poem. By comparing these with the version published in 1917, it is possible to follow the development of the poem in the composition of its images and in the juxtaposition of its scenes. This allows us to shed light on certain obscure images of the poem and to better follow its progress. It is about the awakening of a Folk who becomes a young woman, and who knows the world from a human perspective. Valéry's poem seems to be a representation of Schopenhauer's thought, and in particular of the notion of beauty in the latter. And in its outcome it advances a kind of Nietzschean assertion with regard to the world and to life.