James R. Lawler's elegant introduction deals with Valery's concerns and his influence, and also with critical interpretations of his work. The volume begins with "The Evening with Monsieur Teste" (1896), from the famous "anti-novel" Monsieur Teste, for whose translation Jackson Mathews received the National Book Award in 1974. It includes such notable essays as the "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci," "The Crisis of Mind," and "Poetry and Abstract Thought."

The importance of Valery's prose poetry has only recently been recognized, and a selection is presented here....

Valery's dialogues are considered his most important works of imagination in prose. The volume brings together for the first time all the formal dialogues, including Eupalinos and six other pieces.

Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, Valery's novel is profoundly personal. Monsieur Teste reflects Valery's preoccupation with the phenomenon of a mind detached from sensibility, yet he is also an ordinary fictional character. This volume includes "Snapshots of Monsieur Teste," excerpts from Valery's Cahiers.

All of Valery's major meditations on the theory and practice of poetry are included in this volume. T.S. Eliot writes in his introduction that Valery "invented, and was to impose on his age . . . a new conception of the poet." In Valery's own words, the poet is characterized as a "cool scientist, almost an algebraist, in the service of a subtle dreamer." Valery focuses his attention on the deliberate formal work that transforms the dream into the poem, in his own poems, as well as in analyses of La Fontaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, the Symbolists, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and others.

The description for this book, The Outlook for Intelligence: (With a preface by Francois Valery), will be forthcoming.