Paul Valéry: Visual Perception and

an Aesthetics of Landscape Space

PAUL RYAN

Valéry’s celebrated essay “Inspirations méditerranéennes”, in which he pays poetic

homage to his native port of Sète, the “theatre” of light, colour and space that
was his “site originel” (Œ, I, 1084),1 is unambiguous as to the significance of this
propitious natural context in terms of his visual consciousness and, equally, his
beginnings as a writer and painter. Out of the unrealized ambition of a maritime
vocation emerged the dual creative energy that not only found expression in writing
but also kindled Valéry’s inherent artistic impulses, as he states in the essay: “Il
fallait bien […] dériver cette passion marine malheureuse vers les lettres ou vers
la peinture” (Œ, I, 1087). Recent research has demonstrated that this latter mode
of artistic expression, which, not unlike the poetry, strongly bears the hallmarks
of the maritime experience, forms an integral dimension of Valéry’s creativity.2
Moreover, it is only since a substantial quantity of unpublished material has recently
become available for consultation that one can take stock of the true extent of the
writer’s artistic output.3 This article aims firstly to examine the extensive scientific
investigations into visual space – which Valéry conceived empirically in terms of
distance, expanse and the relative proportions of topological surfaces, lines and
features –, and secondly the representation of landscape in the writer’s prodigious
repertoire of drawings and watercolours that undoubtedly constitute the pictorial
expression of such perceptual phenomena. It is in this conflation of, on the one
hand, theories of visual perception and, on the other, artistic practice that one can
arrive at an aesthetics of external space and landscape.
From his earliest unpublished “carnets” or pocket notebooks that predate the
vast corpus of the Cahiers,4 it is evident that Valéry was a keen observer of landscape

1
Œ refers to Paul Valéry Œuvres complètes, two volumes, edited by Jean Hytier (Paris:
Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, 1957, 1960).
2
For further reading on the subject of Valéry and drawing, see my book Paul Valéry et le dessin
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007).
3
Numerous unpublished drawing notebooks and miscellaneous artistic work, formerly
belonging to Agathe Rouart-Valéry, have been made available for consultation by the descendants
of Paul Valéry.
4
Cahiers, 29 volumes, in fac-simile (Paris, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique
[CNRS], 1957–1961). Hereafter, C, followed by volume and page number. The bulk of Valéry’s
thought is contained in the 27,000 pages of the Cahiers, a selection of which is now accessible
44 Paul Ryan

space, an interest undoubtedly moulded and sustained by the writings and drawings
of Leonardo da Vinci, which he consulted in the Bibliothèque Nationale, by the
landscape work of artists of his milieu from the 1890s onwards such as Monet,5 and
by that of earlier painters such as Lorrain, Turner (both evoked in the prose poetry
of the Cahiers: C, XII, 838 and C, X, 641) and Corot, whose work he knew first-
hand through the art collector Henri Rouart.6 In addition, Valéry’s principal essays
on art7 and aesthetics, as well as those portraying the genesis of his poetic and
artistic consciousness, such as “Inspirations méditerranéennes” and “Regards sur
la mer”, broach various aspects of spatial and visual perception, notably distance
and expanse with particular focus on seascape and landscape through which one
can determine his visual aesthetic. More importantly perhaps, Valéry, well versed
in Italian painting – as evidenced by the preamble to the Exposition de l’art italien.
De Cimabué à Tiepolo (Œ, II, 1345–51) – devotes very specific attention to the art
of landscape painting and its practitioners, from one of the pioneers of perspective,
Paolo Veronese (Œ, II, 1296), to the great exponent of the representation of
topography, Corot (Œ, II, 1312). One must also adduce the section “Réflexion sur le
paysage et bien d’autres choses” (Œ, II, 1218–20) of his famous monograph Degas
Danse Dessin, in which he traces its pictorial evolution from the Dutch school to
“Poussin et Claude” and from simple décor to a space of perceptual consciousness
and poetic imagination, and then to the “impression” of light and matter.8
However, the nature of Valéry’s interest in the perceptual dynamics of
landscape is already clearly in evidence in his formative first work, the Introduction
à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci (1894). One of the central tenets of the essay on
da Vinci – the unrivalled model of intelligence and the imagination for Valéry – is
the relationship between the perceiving I and the heterogeneous field of vision:

in English since the publication of Paul Valéry Cahiers/Notebooks, 3 vols, ed. Brian Stimpson,
assoc. eds, Paul Gifford and Robert Pickering (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000). Volumes
4 and 5 are to appear in 2008.
5
The Cahiers occasionally refer to Monet’s work (C, X, 836) and to Valéry’s visits to his
studio with its “atelier des nénuphars sur l’eau” at Giverny in September 1925 (C, XI, 65) and
the following year (C, XI, 702), a couple of months before the impressionist painter’s death on
5 December.
6
Valéry made the acquaintance of Degas in Henri Rouart’s “hôtel de la rue de Lisbonne” (Œ,
II, 1165) around 1894. Rouart’s famous art collection, which included “les ouvrages des Millet,
des Corot, des Daumier, des Manet – et du Greco” (p. 1166), was much admired by the young
poet.
7
The principal essays on art, originally written as prefaces to exhibition catalogues, are
contained in the Pièces sur l’art and in Vues The essays on da Vinci and aesthetic theory are
grouped in the section “Théorie poétique et esthétique” (Œ, I, 1153–1415).
8
This extract appeared in the review Minotaure in 1934. The monograph Degas Danse Dessin
was written in fragments over a number of years. A beautiful edition of this text, containing
twenty-six engravings by Degas (executed by Maurice Potin), was published by Ambroise
Vollard in 1936.
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 45

“L’observateur n’est d’abord que la condition de cet espace fini: à chaque instant
il est cet espace fini” (Œ, I, 1167). On many occasions in the Cahiers, Valéry
reiterates this concept – “vieille et simple idée (Léonard 95)” (C, XXIV, 65) –
of the closed structure of consciousness, which he calls “L’égosphère”.9 The eye
is not only inextricably linked to this instantaneous realm but is a fundamental
condition of it, thus generating a visual immediacy (“ensemble instantané du
visible” – C, XXIV, 113). Space and distance are perceived and evaluated through
phenomenological experience in which visual, muscular and motor sensation
combine: “Tout champ visuel est lieu d’actes. Tout acte détermine un champ visuel”
(C, IX, 666). According to this conception, the distance separating self from the
immediate contiguous realm, or indeed from the far-off horizon, is principally
determined by the eye and the concomitant action of the hand called “distances
d’action directe à portée de la main” (C, XXVII, 330). The latter functions as a
fundamental instrument of measure within a composite system of scale relative
to which the continuously varying dimensions of distance are gauged, as Valéry
explains in a text accompanying a detailed ink drawing of the hand: “Echelle
des mains. J’appelle ainsi ordre de grandeur des corps que les mains peuvent…
concevoir! […] il faudrait combiner la distance de vision nette aux rayons d’action
des syst[èmes] articulés de la main” (C, XIV, 50).10
To comprehend the phenomenon of space, Valéry devised what he called
in 1944 his “‘expériences’ diverses de vision” (C, XXIX, 165), which included
various visual-motor experiments or viewpoints (“points de vue”) such as the
observation of the interval between objects or between two fingers (C, XIX, 253).
These techniques were equally applied to determine the relationship pertaining to
greater expanses, such as landscape, by means of visual and figurative perspective.
However, what frequently struck Valéry in the analysis of spatial perception was

9
Drawing on the topological analysis of continuity and neighbourhood (or “analysis situs”,
which is frequently evoked in the Cahiers), Valéry considers the intersection in real space of
this sphere with its associated subsets: “L’être projette autour de soi une enceinte fermée dont la
clôture n’est que la réciproque de l’extension de ses sens, figurée par une surface ou lieu de cette
portée. C’est la topologie de la perception” (C, XVIII, 792).
10
The concept of “ordre(s) de grandeur” or order of scale dates back to the very first Cahier
(CI, 50) and is referred to in the contemporaneous essay Introduction à la méthode de Léonard
de Vinci in 1894 (Œ, I, 1170). It is defined as the structure and arrangement of space, ranging
from the atomic molecular scale (C, V, 336) to cosmic spaces, and the hierarchy of size of objects
perceived in the visual system which are relative to each other and to self while varying according
to distance and visual perspective (C, XV, 390). This phenomenon is also observable from the
embryo in the development of the individual (“un ordre rigoureux de succession”) over time
(C, V, 855). Valéry conceived the notion as much from a phenomenological and a psychological
perspective as from a physical one; in 1933, he wrote in his notebook: “Il n’y a pas encore une
Science des ordres de grandeurs, notion jusqu’ici mal définie. Quoiqu’il semble qu’elle tente de
se dégager. Mais je la conçois aussi extra-physique – – et surtout. Et d’abord les grandeurs de
durées – capitales en matière de sensibilité, de conscience, d’actes, etc.” (C, XVI, 636).
46 Paul Ryan

the disproportionate visual accommodation of vast expanse by the retina in which

the sensation of immensity is created (“l’immense horizon est le produit de la très
petite rétine” – C, XXVII, 339). The finger, in association with the eye, is often
used as a paradigm in the visual perception of spatial relativity and perspective in
the Cahiers. One noteworthy text from March 1933, complemented by a striking
watercolour on the previous page of a verdant landscape with villas and cypresses
near Grasse, expresses awareness of the spatial relationship between self and a
distant object whose dimensions vary in accordance with the movement of the
subject: “Je vois cet objet que mon pouce peut occulter et je sais que me déplaçant
vers lui, j’arriverai à un objet énorme par rapport à moi. J’ai reconnu une maison
dans cet objet” (C, XVI, 276).
As might be expected, the Cahiers devote very substantial analysis to
the operation of the eye11 and to the act of perceiving objects and spaces, often
accompanied by drawings of the ocular mechanism and the eye’s ray of vision. One
particular example from the early notebooks, supported by a schema of the sphere
of vision emanating from a point and radiating outwards to accommodate the “vue
vaste”, affirms that the phenomenon of spatial expanse is apprehended relative to
the immediate contiguous position that self occupies:
Sensation de vastitude. Comment est fabriqué cet effet? […] On ne parle
de ciel vaste (homogène) que par rapport au sol vu. Un sol homogène, plan,
allant à l’horizon paraît immense par son raccord avec le sol aux pieds du
spectateur […] L’impression de vastitude est due alors à l’existence de 2
sphères successives. (CIII, 344–345)12
Defining the graduated ratio or relativity of size in the field of vision through
the concept of the “ordre de grandeurs” was from the outset a central preoccupation
that Valéry most commonly evoked in scientifically orientated reflections. According
to the theory of “Géométrie visuelle” (CII, 209), which he formulated in the very
early Cahiers, distance and space are apprehended geometrically in the form of
lines, curves and surfaces, akin to an architectural construction that structures and
organises space.13 This analysis was undoubtedly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s

11
Few phenomena are given as much importance as the complex act of the gaze, which for
Valéry constituted the principal agent of dynamic and spatial vision: “La notion du Regard est une
notion de géométrie cinémato-psychologique” (C, X, 551). See C, XX, 851 on the phenomenon
of accidental vision and C, XXIV, 279 which elucidates three fundamental types of gaze.
12
Source reference of the type CI/CII/CIII plus pagination are to the volume and page of the
integral edition Paul Valéry Cahiers 1894–1914, volumes I to X (Paris: Gallimard, 1987–2006).
13
A similar geometrical consciousness underpinned da Vinci’s conception of architecture;
see the Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci: “Il jouit des choses distribuées dans
les dimensions de l’espace; des voussures, des charpentes, des dômes tendus; des galeries
et des loges alignées; des masses que retient en l’air leur poids dans des arcs” (Œ, I, 1177).
Architecture, which Valéry called one of his “premières amours” (Œ, II, 1277), constitutes a
major visual motif in the early “Notes anciennes” and throughout the Cahiers.
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 47

research into optics that led to chromatic perspective, which was expressed in
pictorial terms by the use of chiaroscuro and sfumato (referred to by Valéry: Œ, I,
1202) or the gradual transition between areas of different colour and the dissolution
of contours in the ethereal vaporous air.14 Ignoring the didactic distinction between
science and art, da Vinci’s synthetic approach consisted in perceiving objects and
coloured spaces as visual phenomena and not as verbal concepts or as a projection
of prior knowledge onto these percepts. The receptive and projective gaze, “le
regard pur sur les choses” (Œ, I, 1171) that effaces the signifier and sees the image
afresh, lay at the heart of da Vinci’s perception that encompassed visual phenomena
ranging from “des fumées poussant sur les toits aux arborescences lointaines, aux
hêtres gazeux des horizons […] des étincelles solaires de la mer aux mille minces
miroirs des feuilles de bouleau” (Œ, I, 1177).
The action of the gaze in perception is for Valéry fundamentally indivisible
from that in aesthetics, a correlation emphatically evinced in remarks pertaining
to Degas (Œ, II, 1188–9), Monet (Œ, II, 1327) and Berthe Morisot (Œ, II, 1303).
Similar to the way the Renaissance painters mathematically divided the pictorial
space of the canvas, Valéry, whose thinking was undoubtedly informed by this
method, commonly apprehends the visual realm as a structured geometrical entity,
which he expresses in prepositional terms in his physiological and phenomenological
investigations: “L’espace est en quelque sorte subdivisé et classé. Devant – derrière
– haut bas – gauche droite. Le lien des points vus – superficie ou couleur et
profondeur – Surface et angle solide – bords du champ visuel” (CVII, 31). In fact,
the Cahiers offer numerous examples of this tendency to geometrise distance, as
in the text “Domaines de la vue” (C, XI, 775), accompanied by schemas consisting
of a section of space geometrically divided into squares and curves. The act of
seeing, which operates within a dialectic of reception and projection, is in effect for
Valéry a spatialisation of the sphere of vision (“sphère de vision nette projective”,
C, X, 636) which apprehends the relationships between forms, lines, objects
and interstitial distances or intervals.15 It is not therefore a passive reception, but
more accurately a visual construction according to which the composite system
of elements and components are dynamically generated: “Un ensemble visuel

14
The pictorial representation of depth dates back to the early Quattrocento. While the
mathematical solution for what is called progressive diminution and perspective (first broached
by Alberti in De pictura) was devised by the architect Brunelleschi, the technical mastery of
linear perspective through the use of a single vanishing point and atmospheric perspective was
achieved by Van Eyck in the 1430s, by Masaccio (linear and central perspective) and later by
Piero della Francesca (classical geometric perspective). Da Vinci’s celebrated paintings are
characterized by the integration of classical pyramidal composition into atmospheric perspective
– the evanescent mountainous landscape veiled in blue haze or sfumato.
15
Valéry makes an important distinction between passive vision and the active gaze: “L’œil est
organe de la vision, mais le regard est acte de prévision, et il est commandé par ce qui doit être
vu, veut être vu” (Œ, II, 757–758).
48 Paul Ryan

donné, paysage etc. ne dit point les virtualités des objets qu’il contient. Mais dire,
voir objets, c’est les introduire, c’est ajouter des liaisons et des différentielles, des
modifications virtuelles” (C, XVI, 149).
Given the extent of visual analysis undertaken in the Cahiers, it is unsurprising
that Valéry’s reflection on landscape does not concern itself with aesthetic
appreciation or idyllic pastoral vision. In effect, it is the phenomenology of space,
“le plein visuel […] ses colorations” (C, XXVIII, 793), along with the dynamic
properties inherent in topography, and by extension the artistic representation
of it, that most engaged his imagination: “Les paysages ne m’intéressent pas
normalement mais la matière et le mouvement et les preuves qui sont dans les
paysages” (C, X, 622). As Valéry critically remarked in several essays, and notably
in the section “Réflexion sur le paysage et bien d’autres choses” of the essay Degas
Danse Dessin, traditional landscape, which was content with making art a mere
simulacrum of reality, corrupted painting in much the same way that description
profoundly and negatively altered literature: “la peinture trouve dans l’ordre des
Lettres une merveilleuse similitude: l’invasion de la Littérature par la description
fut parallèle à celle de la peinture par le paysage” (Œ, II, 1219). Just as this narrative
device reduced the intellectual input of the reader and increased the sentiment of
the arbitrary, notably by the manner in which descriptive parts could be readily
substituted or their order switched, landscape painting had, outside of creating some
immediate impression (“effets instantanés”, p. 1220), the similar effect of limiting
the abstract imagination.16 If Valéry disliked the sentiment of landscape being
reduced to a visual “inventory” (“l’énumération des parties ou des aspects d’une
chose vue”, p. 1324), his most trenchant criticism was levelled at the promotion of
mimesis (“l’imitation pure et simple de ce qu’on voit”, p. 1324) and artistic facility
to the detriment of pure observation and the role of the intellect:
En somme, tout raisonnement désormais épargné à l’artiste […] toute
exigence réduite à celle des réactions de la rétine, l’à peu près dans les
formes […] et tous ces maux s’étendant du paysage à la figure humaine, par
une sorte de contagion de facilité ; enfin la négligence technique à laquelle
l’habitude du travail immédiat dans la campagne est trop favorable, l’absence
de préparations, l’emploi de procédés brutaux, – tels sont, me semble-t-il, les
effets assez regrettables de fort beaux exemples et d’admirables productions.
(p. 1324)17

16
The essay “Fragments des mémoires d’un poème”, in which Valéry draws on the analogy
of the perception of visual space, reveals his innate tendency to substitute elements in a literary
work that are perceived as fundamentally arbitrary: “La réalité observable n’a jamais rien de
visiblement nécessaire […] J’avoue que mon sentiment et ma pratique instinctive de substitutions
sont détestables: elles ruinent des plaisirs” (Œ, I, 1468).
17
Valéry’s dislike of modern art stemmed precisely from the emphasis on shock effect or, as
he terms it in “Autour de Corot”, the creation of “du bonheur immédiat de l’œil, de la manière
de voir, de l’amusement de la sensibilité” (Œ, II, 1322).
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 49

This conception of the work as “l’arbitraire raisonné” constitutes a funda-

mental tenet of Valéry’s poetic and aesthetic theory. In the “Discours sur l’esthétique”
(Œ, I, 1307),18 he argues that the ultimate objective of art is precisely to restrict
the sensation of the arbitrary by conferring necessity on it and to bestow order on
what is essentially disorder. From this perspective, Valéry’s ambivalence regarding
landscape, which is first and foremost perceived as an arbitrary disposition, becomes
more readily understandable.19 Even with regard to locations that he frequently
represented in pictorial terms, he cites his apathy as an inherent characteristic
of this aesthetic vision: “Indifférence rapide aux décors – Golfes de Naples etc.
Panoramas, Venise etc. Comme éloignant du sens de structure – Beaux accidents”
(C, XVI, 304). In the tradition of da Vinci, “l’ange de la morphologie” (C, XI,
199), Valéry’s dual approach of the scientist and artist is intuitively motivated by
the impulse to understand via drawing the haphazard composition and formation
of regular geometrical forms, such as crystals,20 seashells, leaves, plants and rocks
that randomly occur in the entropic physical and natural world:21 “cet instinct […]
qui me fait peu saisi et fixé par la figure générale d’un paysage; mais au contraire
par sa matière, roc, feuille. Sol, et eau; […] les profils me semblent quelconques,
et aussi libres que ce que je trace au hasard avec le crayon” (C, XXIII, 553). It

18
For further reading, see Brian Stimpson’s essay “An Aesthetics of the Subject: Music and the
Visual Arts”, in Paul Gifford and Brian Stimpson (eds), Reading Paul Valéry – Universe in Mind
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 219–235.
19
When Valéry remarks on the visual beauty of a particular panorama, his interest is either
topographical or chromatic, as can be observed in this reflection on a “Paysage sur le Lot” from
the Cahiers in 1942: “Grandes masses molles de collines en terre rouge. Surface très variées de
forme […] et de couleurs étonnamment intenses, jaunes de divers tons et valeurs, et rouges du
vif au rose, du rose […] au grenat contrastant avec le neutre du ciel. Et le tout semé des hampes
dorées de peupliers, surtout dans les creux. Effet d’étoffe bizarre, riche” (C, XXVI, 437).
20
From the earliest Cahiers (CI, 83), Valéry was interested in the architecture of crystals,
which as a configuration with vectorial properties (“la structure interne des corps cristallisés
[230] types de symétrie distincts” – C, XII. 318), spread by their macles or twin parts, each
of which having a definite orientation or “degré de symétrie” to the other. This reflection was
inspired by the reading of François Ernest Mallard’s Traité de cristallographie géométrique
et physique (Paris: Dunod, 1879) in the 1890s and later by the work of Pierre Curie (Sur la
Symétrie dans les phénomènes physiques, Gauthier-Villars, 1908): “Les cristaux se forment et
s’accroissent conformément à Carnot-Claussius. Loi de Curie” (C, XII, 444). The poem “Les
grenades” in Charmes gives poetic expression to the apprehension of internalised space, in this
instance the “secrète architecture” of the many-chambered pomegranate.
21
This analysis dates back to the Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci: “Le monde
est irrégulièrement semé de dispositions régulières. Les cristaux en sont; les fleurs, les feuilles;
maints ornements de stries, de taches sur les fourrures, les ailes, les coquilles des animaux; les
traces du vent sur les sables et les eaux” (Œ, I, 1172). Also present in the essay and the Cahiers is
the Valéryan notion of the “inform” that defines haphazard, irreducible and largely unidentifiable
masses, contours, shapes of objects and figures in the visual world. See the section “Du sol et de
l’informe” in Degas Danse Dessin (Œ, II, 1193–1196).
50 Paul Ryan

is precisely this representational challenge that Corot took up in his landscape

painting, as Valéry explains in the essay “Autour de Corot”: “Il est d’ailleurs l’un
des peintres qui ont le plus observé la figure même de la terre. Le roc, le sable, le
pli du terrain […] la fuite de cet accident continu que présente le sol naturel lui
sont des objets de première importance” (Œ, II, 1312). Corot, who saw nature as
“le modèle” (p. 1311), was not only preoccupied with rendering the disposition of
visual forms as the eye perceived them (“la valeur poétique singulière de certains
arrangements des choses visibles”, p. 1313), but with evoking the very sensation
they produced.22 What Valéry discerned and indeed admired in Corot’s study of
nature was his ability to make the observer experience the very act of painting itself
(“nous faire sentir ce qu’ils sentent devant la Nature, et se peindre en la peignant”,
p. 1312).23
In view of Valéry’s heightened sense of the arbitrary and the accidental,24
which, as he often affirmed, acutely underpinned his perception of form and
topography, one can readily understand why landscape is conceived not as an
immutable entity but as one that can be virtually transformed or reinvented. This
notion is very much consistent with his conception of a literary work, according to
which any component can be modified in writing or even in reading. In producing
it, the overarching imperative of the writer or the artist is, Valéry argues, to impose
necessity on the sensation of the arbitrary, the latter being an inherent condition of
any artistic creation.25 Interpreting a painting or a landscape is thus comparable to
that of a literary work, “l’œuvre génératrice”, since both fundamentally present an
accidental aspect to the eye of the observer; Valéry makes this correlation in the
“Première leçon du Cours de poétique” given at the Collège de France in 1937:
“c’est en quoi […] une analogie particulière se découvre entre cet effet d’une
œuvre d’art et celui de certains aspects de la nature: accident géologique” (Œ, I,

22
Interestingly, in the essay “Discours sur l’esthétique”, the first of three orders that Valéry
proposes as a classification of the multifarious work of man and the proliferation of his research
is termed “Esthésique”, which he defines as “tout ce qui se rapporte à l’étude des sensations […]
les excitations et les réactions sensibles qui n’ont pas de rôle physiologique uniforme et bien
défini” (Œ, I, 1311).
23
It is significant that this essay originally appeared as “De Corot et du paysage” at the beginning
of Vingt Estampes de Corot, published in 1932 by Editions des Bibliothèques Nationales de
France and was only given its definitive title for the collection Pièces sur l’art in 1938. The
preparatory manuscript notes (N.a.fr. 19068) reveal some very interesting observations on the
nature of landscape.
24
In one key autobiographical note from the Cahiers, Valéry states: “Il y a en moi un étranger
à toutes choses humaines, toujours prêt à ne rien comprendre à ce qu’il voit, et à tout regarder
comme particularité, curiosité, formation locale et arbitraire […] il n’est rien que je ne trouve,
cent fois par jour, accidentel, fragmentaire, extrait d’une infinité de possibles” (C, XXIII, 572).
25
This perspective is highlighted in several of Valéry’s key essays on aesthetics and poetics;
see for example the “Notion générale de l’art” (Œ, I, 1406) and the “Discours sur l’esthétique”
(Œ, I, 1308–1309).
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 51

1351). However, this intrinsic accidental quality of landscape (“accidents naturels”

– C, XVII, 778) has the effect of intensifying the sensation of the potential and
the desire to transform the disposition of surfaces and elements by the mind’s eye.
Reminiscent of da Vinci’s gaze that deconstructs and rearranges the visual realm, it
is the capacity of the visual imagination to interpret and to invent freely that most
engages Valéry’s sensibility, as he explains in the essay “Fragments des mémoires
d’un poème” (1937):
Il m’arrive, devant un paysage, que les formes de la terre, les profils d’horizon,
la situation et les contours des bois et des cultures me paraissent de purs
accidents […] mais que je regarde comme si je pouvais les transformer
librement ainsi qu’on le ferait sur le papier par le crayon ou par le pinceau.
[…] Mais au contraire, la substance des objets qui sont sous mes yeux, la
roche, l’eau, la matière de l’écorce ou de la feuille, et la figure des êtres
organisés me retiennent. Je ne puis m’intéresser qu’à ce que je ne puis
inventer. (Œ, I, 1468)
This perspective, often broached in the privacy of the Cahiers, lies at the heart of
Valéry’s understanding of aesthetics in general. It is not surprising, therefore, to
encounter prose texts in which the space of landscape is perceived as an artificial or
plastic construct – “une photographie sans intérêt” (CIX, 74), “un tableau pendu au
mur d’une chambre” (C, VI, 280), “une tapisserie de laine” (C, XXVI, 479) or “une
mosaïque colorée” (C, X, 614) –, an impression often intensified by the writer’s
window framing the landscape.26 In all branches of artistic creation, the interest
resided not in the finished work but in the actual praxis of creative production – the
quintessentially Valéryan concept termed “le faire, poïein (Œ, I, 1342)27 – which, as
he often stated in the essays and in the notebooks, constituted the true foundation of
his poetic and aesthetic vision: “Le FAIRE me domine, et ce qui me semble fait ne
me dit rien. – C’est donc ce avec quoi l’on fait qui m’éveille et m’attire. Donne-moi
la matière et les outils. Je me charge de la forme. Mais donne-moi surtout l’envie de
faire” (C, XXIII, 561).28 This “poïetic” function, more commonly associated with
Valéry’s conception of the act of writing, is also very much observed in the plastic
arts such as sculpture.29

26
The window enclosing a landscape is a favourite motif in Valéry’s watercolours, many of
which are to be found across the Cahiers: see C, XX, 345. A complete list can be found in my
article “Alors vient la fenêtre”, Etudes Valéryennes, 91 (2002), 117–141 (p. 137).
27
Reflections of this nature are generally classified by Valéry under the rubric “Poïétique”
(Poïetics), whose etymological origin (from the Greek poïein) denotes the actual art and act of
making.
28
For further reading on this problematic, see Michel Jarrety, “The Poetics of Practice and
Theory”, in Reading Paul Valéry – Universe in Mind, pp. 105–120.
29
While several artists (Henri Vallette and Paul Niclausse) executed a bust of Valéry, it was
during the numerous sittings for the sculptress Renée Vautier that he was best able to appreciate
and observe the physical involvement of the artist in the act of creating, which he likens to a
52 Paul Ryan

Thus, the artistic endeavour that fails to engage the creative faculty, in other
words that does not suggest the physical and transformational act of making (“le
faire”), or indeed allow a work to be altered, is for Valéry devoid of intellectual
interest. The observation of visual space, and accordingly its representation, is
never considered a passive act but rather an examination of its immanent, generative
and dynamic properties. In this context of formation, there is no paradigm more
instructive of the opposition between the organic process of Nature (“cette Puissance
génératrice” – Œ, I, 897) and the external intervention of man than the seashell.30
It is in fact out of this opposition that the relevant corollary, and an important
principle in Valéry’s definition of visual space, emerges. According to this dialectic,
developed in the essay “L’Homme et la coquille”, the work of the artist, which is
characterised by individual actions (“par gestes successifs, bien séparés, bornés,
énumérables” – Œ, I, 895–896), is not prescribed or determined by any necessity,
whereas the development of the shell (“chose vécue et non faite”, p. 900) occurs
as a single integrated act that indivisibly combines the forces of physics with its
geometry as well as time with space and matter.
While the generation of the seashell is contrary to “l’œuvre de l’homme”, it
is not an arbitrary form. A more precise correlation can be found between an artistic
work, an arbitrary form on which the artist endeavours to confer necessity, and other
occurrences or features of the natural world, notably geomorphic or geodynamic
phenomena, both of which are also occasioned by fortuitous processes, as Valéry
states in the essay “Discours sur l’esthétique”: “C’est en quoi, remarquons-le, une
analogie particulière se découvre entre l’effet d’une œuvre d’art et celui d’un aspect
de la nature, dû à quelque accident géologique […] L’artiste vit dans l’intimité de
son arbitraire et dans l’attente de sa nécessité” (Œ, I, 1309).31 Valéry’s indifference
to the static and completed nature of topographical form, or to that of other natural
phenomena, fundamentally arises from the exclusion or absence of the observer

dance in the essay “Mon buste” (Œ, II, 1357–65): “j’en viens à imaginer les actes de sculpture
comme une combinaison de mimique et de danse, succession de figures et de mouvements”
(p. 1361).
30
The shell is one of the natural forms that most intrigued Valéry and is commonly reproduced
in the Cahiers particularly in the mid-1930s. Numerous drawings go beyond its form, probing
the geometry and construction of the object: see for example C, XIX, 187, 255 and C, XX,
463.
31
If Valéry was regularly confronted with this sentiment of the arbitrary in his own writing, he
also very markedly witnessed it in the “opération” of the sculptor Renée Vautier, who was faced
at each moment with “une infinite d’infinité d’éventualités” (Œ, II, 1361) as she worked on the
bust of the poet: “les œuvres de l’art me touchent un peu moins […] par le plaisir direct qu’elles
prétendent me donner que par l’idée qu’elles m’inspirent de l’action de celui qui les a faites. Il
y a chez moi une tendance originelle, invincible […] à considérer l’œuvre terminée, l’objet fini,
comme déchet, rebut, chose morte” (p. 1359). While only later included in the Pièces sur l’art,
the essay “Mon Buste” was originally written as a preface to the exhibition catalogue Renée
Vautier: sculpture de 1923 à 1935 (Galerie Charpentier, 1935).
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 53

from their formational and generative process. It comes as no surprise therefore to

encounter the poetic analogy of the “l’action qui fait” and “la chose faite” (Œ, I,
1343) in this context:
Les paysages, ruines parfois envahies de vie végétale me font plutôt de l’ennui
quand ils sont remarquables – c[’est]-à-d[ire] devant être remarqués. Car
alors ils sont choses faites. – J’ai aussi l’impulsion bizarre, devant eux, que
je puis modeler leur forme avec la main. Ou bien l’impression d’arbitraire et
de momentané que donne un décor de théâtre. – Mais le grain d’une roche, la
dureté d’un tronc, la vie froide de feuilles saisies à pleine main, l’inertie de
l’eau – m’arrêtent, l’immobilisent et m’accablent bien plus que les espaces
“infinis” qui effrayaient l’Adversaire. (C, XVI, 504)32
Given its primacy in Valéry’s philosophical “System”, the role of language
constantly underpins his interrogation of the representation of spatial and
topographical phenomena. Its overarching principle is that verbal description of
landscape only manages to convey an impression of the inert exterior arrangement
or appearance and not the deeper and more dynamic properties that consciousness
intuitively senses and experiences. It is precisely this complex perception of the
heterogeneous, yet almost imperceptible, configuration of visual space that Valéry
endeavours to express in numerous prose texts or “aubades”: “la profondeur de
l’apparence (je ne sais l’exprimer) […] Un paysage quelconque est un _U33 – il
cache ce qu’il implique, exige” (C, XII, 190). However, this desire to represent
landscape commonly finds itself in conflict with the limitations of the linguistic
system, and thereby yields to aporia and the inexpressibility of phenomenological
experience: “je me trouvais au centre d’un paysage qu’il est inutile de décrire. Les
couleurs, les figures des choses ou de la vue qui m’entourait ne changeraient rien,
n’auraient aucune part à ce que je veux expliquer” (C, XV, 239).34
The inability of language to render the visual realm consequently impels
Valéry to invoke the representational possibilities of other means of expression
that can more suitably respond to a visually imposing panorama. This aspiration
towards a more intense expressive register capable of transcending language is
nowhere more apparent than in the poems of the Cahiers where prose fragments,
concatenated in a manner reminiscent of an impressionist painting, are commonly

32
Pascal was the celebrated “Adversary” with whom Valéry has a long polemic essentially
relating to the metaphysical interrogation in the Pensées; see the essay “Variation sur une pensée”
(Œ, I, 458–473).
33
In Valéry’s semiotic system, this term designates a minuscule part or element of the
universe.
34
Valéry regularly highlights the inability of the linguistic system to render space and
particularly landscape, as in this early reflection on the exterior stasis of the countryside: “Je
suis à la campagne – je réfléchis à ce calme dans ce calme – et je vois tout à coup que je manque
de mots, de notions ou subdivisions pour représenter cet ensemble changeant” (CVI, 101).
54 Paul Ryan

called upon to render fleeting sensorial impressions. In one notable text from
the dossier Poèmes et Petits Poèmes Abstraits, written in Genoa in 1910, Valéry
endeavours to comprehend the impulse at the heart of the creative response which
the natural surface configuration of “Mont Fascie” elicits: “Faire de ce massif une
belle étude topographique. Heureux celui que l’écriture soulage! L’homme répond
de toutes ses réponses […] Dessine, peint, – surexcite son dictionnaire. Pourquoi ce
besoin d’expression? […] Communiquer. Faire durer. Fixer. Egaler. Reconstituer
–” (CX, 91).35 Significantly, when this problematic of the “séparation” between
self and visual space (“Paysage – Connaissance MOI/NON-MOI” – C, XXI,
332) arises in 1938, again pertaining to the view from the holiday residence “La
Polynésie” of the Mediterranean coast,36 Valéry observes more specifically that the
heterogeneous composition of visual perception can only be rendered by actually
altering it “secundem artem” (Œ, I, 1307), in other words via drawing: “Que faire
de tous ces incidents de lumière et d’obscurité, de ces masses et de ces détails
infinis? […] Que faire? c[’est]-à-d[ire] en quoi le changer? Dessiner – Peindre
– Parcourir – Faire abstraction de – Evaluer en mots” (C, XXI, 164).37
The reference to the “système d’expressions” (C, XVIII, 350) in these
previous texts becomes all the more significant in light of the very prolific graphic
and artistic work that Valéry undertook from around 1886. The watercolours
and drawings of the familiar landscapes and maritime panoramas of his native
Sète and its environs (Palavas, the “golfe du Lion”, Aigues-Mortes, and Agde)
contained in numerous pocket notebooks and drawing albums38 reveal this acute
visual and spatial consciousness that he retrospectively described in his 1933 essay
“Inspirations méditerranéennes” (Œ, I, 1093).39 The most noteworthy examples

35
On Valéry’s prose, see Robert Pickering’s illuminating study Paul Valéry poète en prose
– la prose lyrique des Cahiers (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1983). For specific reading on the
representation of experience and the limits of language, see by same author the essay “‘Je
manque de mots’: Limits of Self-expression in the Lyrical Prose of Valéry’s Cahiers”, Australian
Journal of French Studies, 18 (1981), 39–55.
36
It is at this property, situated on the Giens peninsula and belonging to the Comtesse de
Béhague, that Valéry wrote the essence of Degas Danse Dessin in August 1933. The 1938 edition
of the text contains a dedication to her (Œ, II, 1565–1566).
37
One “aubade” or morning prose poem, written in the same location some six years earlier,
details a similar experience: “Matin calme – Repos immense vers le lever du soleil […] Comment
‘rendre’ cette immobilité? Le paysage devient peinture – Silence – Silence et immobilité,
conditions des arts plastiques” (C, XV, 786).
38
This corpus, distinct from the Cahiers, is composed of approximately eighty pocket
notebooks, including numerous “albums à dessin” dedicated exclusively to drawing. Many of
these notebook have only recently been made available for consultation; see my article “Les
petits carnets et albums à dessin d’adolescence de Paul Valéry: 1886–1890”, Orpheus – Revue
internationale de poésie, 5 (2005), 5–17.
39
Valéry evoked in similar poetic terms the maritime context that provided “les décors
spirituels” (Œ, I, 1816) of his ideas in the essay “La rive du Languedoc” (1936): “Rien de plus
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 55

in this regard are the unpublished “Carnet 1887”, which bears the inscription
“Croquis de voyage” on the cover, and the “Carnet à dessin 1888”. Both notebooks,
which extensively chart Valéry’s travels in the Midi, depict splendid views of the
Mediterranean sea bordered by the simple contour of a coastline and offer striking
coloured landscapes around Le Vigan in the Gard as well as ink sketches of the
topographical configuration of countryside vistas that he encountered.
With the inception of Valéry’s “System” in 1894, the artistic work subsequent-
ly alternated between the vast corpus of the Cahiers and the pocket notebooks, both
of which contain an extraordinary array of visual subject matter, among which some
of the writer’s favourite objects, such as ports, boats, architectural structures, shells,
trees, and other natural forms. However, the principal thematic in Valéry’s graphic
work was incontestably the representation of maritime space. The Cahiers include,
in equal amounts of watercolours and ink drawings, a very substantial number of
seascapes and landscapes painted in various locations in France and during Valéry’s
travels around Europe.40 It is significant that the sea voyage undertaken in June
1925 aboard the French battleship the Provence proved to be the event that not
only rekindled the use of colour in the Cahiers, but provided the setting for a host
of watercolours of seascapes, ports and ships.41 It appears that from this point on,
landscape and seascape take centre stage in pictorial representation, particularly
in the notebooks immediately following this sea journey, which contain some of
Valéry’s most impressive illustrations. A remarkable example of this preoccupation
with spatial topography is the representation of the “Île Ribaud” situated opposite
the summer residence “La Polynésie” (C, XI, 315) where Valéry frequently resided
in the 1920s and 1930s. Significantly, this small island is not only the subject of
ink sketches (C, XIX 298 and C, XX, 225) but also of numerous watercolours
(C, X, 619) that evince careful observation of its contour and shape, some of
which representing it as an amorphous almost inform coloured mass, such as the
multicoloured illustration from 1932 entitled “Petit promontoire à La Polyn[ésie]
au lever du soleil” (C, XV, 770) that visualises the accompanying description: “Au

simple, de plus net et de plus lucide […] qu’un tel site qui n’est fait que de trois éléments purs:
le ciel, le sable et l’eau. […] La vue n’y trouve point de détail qui altère et qui amoindrisse la
vaste et puissante impression de posséder par les yeux l’entière sphère de l’espace” (Paul Valéry,
Vues [Paris: La Table Ronde, 1948]), pp. 261–262. See also the “Discours prononcé à l’occasion
de la distribution des prix du collège de Sète” (Œ, I, 1437–1438).
40
While the first watercolours in the Cahiers do not appear until the end of 1921, it is four
years later before the medium is extensively utilised. The maritime thematic provides the subject
matter for over fifty watercolour drawings in the corpus from the period 1924 (C, X, 611) to
1938 (C, XXI, 55).
41
The section entitled “Souvenir du Cuirassé Provence” in the Cahiers comprises
approximately fifty pages (C, X, 787–839) of observations, ink drawings and watercolours
of various maritime subjects recorded during the fortnight at sea.
56 Paul Ryan

lever du soleil, ombres froides, et douceur tiède des parties éclairées de cet objet
sur fond de mer bleu pâle, fourrure dorée de pins, faces rose orangé.”
The culmination of Valéry’s painting odyssey came in September 1929 during
a second Mediterranean voyage on the yacht the “Tenax” which was recorded in
the unpublished drawing album entitled “Îles”. It is in this remarkable document
– unquestionably the most copious notebook in drawing terms of the writer’s
entire opus with no less than sixty pages of illustrations including about twenty
watercolours – that his propensity for painting both landscape and maritime space is
best observed. While most of the work is devoted to multicoloured representations
of marine panoramas, views of the shoreline and ports of the Mediterranean
(reminiscent of “ce qu’a ressenti et magnifiquement exprimé le grand Claude
Lorrain” – Œ, I, 1085), it is the attraction to form and line, primarily expressed in
ink, of contours of islands or inlets, the simple curve of the horizon and the profile
of coastal terrain which constitutes the graphic illustration of Valéry’s aesthetic
principles of the arbitrary nature of topography and the preoccupation with form
and line or “la figure ou contour assez simple […] ‘grandes lignes’ et masses” (C,
XVI, 254).
One can deduce from Valéry’s graphic work that visual consciousness is
not only very much evidenced by the breath of pictorial representation of external
spaces but also by his acute interest in colour.42 Its use varies significantly in the
drawings, ranging from a few related tones of one hue (as can be observed in the
watercolour of a peninsula depicted in grey, yellow and light green: C, XI, 347),
to delicate and restrained representations (like the watercolour of Lake Lucerne
– C, XI, 795). However, the Cahiers contain numerous landscapes and seascapes
that demonstrate a marked proclivity for a pure and concentrated palette, as in the
full-page Mediterranean countryside with a town and cypress trees in the distance,
composed primarily of a gradation of green tones (C, XVI, 275) and the impressive
panorama of a vibrant blue sky and sea seen from the balcony of the Hotel Royal
in San Remo from March 1933 (C, XVI, 215). Valéry’s watercolours generally tend
towards a broader chromatic range often characterised by diluted brush-strokes that
soften the contours, thereby giving the illustration a strong impressionist appearance
and tonality. This is particularly evident in the multicoloured depiction of the sea
with a ship in the background (C, XIII, 844), or the equally vivid landscape with
trees and a lake set against a vast sky (C, XIV, 727), which attempt to render the
vagaries of the changing light.

42
Valéry devotes much attention in the Cahiers to the nature of light and colour from a physical
and sensorial perspective. Valéry’s thought clearly reflects research into the decomposition of
colour, as well as the phenomenon of impressionism at the end of the 19th century. See the
“Essai de représentation des couleurs” in CV, 188–192, and the “Discours sur l’esthétique” (Œ,
I, 1313).
 Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space 57

While Valéry commonly draws on the visual image to translate and support a
multiplicity of written abstract analyses, most watercolours are entirely independent
of textual accompaniment. In this context, when not serving as an auxiliary and not
sharing the page with other graphic representations, the image assumes a distinct
expressive autonomy. Unsurprisingly, many watercolours depict a marine panorama
observed from a balcony overlooking the sea and almost always including a littoral
view in the foreground. The window, one of Valéry’s favourite graphic motifs,
commonly provides the aperture for the imagination as well as, in visual terms, the
natural frame for the landscape by enclosing and delineating space for the eye.43
It is important here to instance the correspondence in the Cahiers between
pictorial representation and written description which combine to depict the
chromatic effect of landscape viewed from the balcony or the window. While
relatively few in number, the drawings and watercolours accompanying some
of the prose poems of the dossier Poèmes et Petits Poèmes Abstraits adequately
compensate in terms of representation and expressive quality. The most prominent
example is undoubtedly that of the two watercolours complementing the prose text
“Grasse” (C, XII, 187), which details the auditory impressions perceived outside.
The watercolour on the top of the page, composed of a window with shutters
overlooking a hilltop town and a Mediterranean countryside, is reproduced and
significantly magnified without the window frame in the watercolour below. The
sounds conveyed in prose and the chromatic sensations rendered in image unite to
create a powerful poetic and artistic expression of a multiple sensory experience.
As one might expect, it is at dawn, the most cherished and spiritual moment
of the day for Valéry, that the inchoate and successive movement of landscape
space is best observed. Reminiscent of the progressive development of a painting
on canvas, numerous prose poems trace both in descriptive and structural terms
the evolving dynamism of light and colour at dawn: “A l’aube, ce pays se compose
peu à peu. La composition change avec l’accroissement du détail et des différences
des tons […] On voit croître les forces des formes et des couleurs propres […]
tout est écrit dans une tonalité plate homogène en tapisserie” (C, XVI, 272). What
most engages Valéry’s sensibility is the genesis of the real world from nocturnal
inertia to the first timid nuances of light that progressively transform the uniform
and amorphous space of the landscape into a system of symbols and colours.44 This

43
The window, the point of convergence and passage to external space, was the principal
means of rendering perspective in Italian Renaissance painting from da Vinci, Pietro Vannucci (Il
Perugino) to his disciple Raphael, as Panofsky remarks: “Avec les pères du Trecento, notamment
Giotto et Duccio, l’on commence déjà à penser l’œuvre de peinture, selon la doctrine qu’allait
formuler Leone Battista Alberti vers 1435, comme une fenêtre imaginaire, transparente, à
travers laquelle nous dirigeons notre regard vers une section de l’espace”, L’œuvre d’art et ses
significations. Essai sur les arts “visuels” (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 105.
44
For further reading on this phenomenon, see my article “Dynamogénie du moi dans les
58 Paul Ryan

dynamic passage from nothingness to the visible realm is measured in terms of the
gradual conversion of forms into identifiable objects and signifiers (C, XXVII, 539).
Dawn might, therefore, be more accurately defined as a semiogenesis, in which
form and language are simultaneously brought into being with the generation of
landscape, a process synonymous with the progressive composition of signs on a
painter’s canvas evoked in various “aubades” (C, XVIII, 32).
In attempting to define “l’Esthétique proprement philosophique” (Œ, I,
1310), Valéry proposes that aesthetic pleasure excites the intelligence or the
sensibility by the presence of the order of elements “le sentir, le saisir, le vouloir,
et le faire” (Œ, I, 1299). The conception of visual space and landscape exposed in
the Cahiers is thus very much consonant with this phenomenological quartet to
which it invariably refers. In keeping with his depreciatory judgement of landscape
artists who represented visual space as an accessory that the eye passively receives
(“lieu de merveilles, séjour d’une rêverie, plaisir des yeux distraits” – Œ, II, 1218),
Valéry’s aesthetic and scientific analysis more precisely perceives it as an arbitrary
and transformable entity, a material that the artist can actively model and shape,
as one note in the Cahiers puts it: “Paysagiste, devant un paysage, se dira: on peut
faire q[uelque]ch[ose] de ceci; et non: reproduire ceci. Ce paysage est utilisable”
(C, XII, 394).

Waterford Institute of Technology

Poèmes et PPA de Valéry”, Australian Journal of French Studies, 39 (2002), 354–366.