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Cahiers / Notebooks 3

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Cahiers: Notebooks (Volume 3) by Paul Valéry, chief editor and translations by Brian Stimpson, translations by (Peter Lang) This volume explores the parameters of mind in its affective and intellectual limits. As always Valéry circles against the common drift seeking a personal and sometimes downright idiosyncratic basis for experience as his own. As in the previous two volumes this is the best representation of his notebooks in English.
The present volume takes forward the investigation into the nature of intellec­tual and affective being which is introduced in volume 1 of Valéry's Cahiers/ Notebooks, and the exploration of the different dimensions and expressions of thought and creativity in volume 2. It is perhaps not surprising that an enterprise devoted to examining the functioning of the human mind in all its aspects, should concern itself so specifically and so comprehensively with the different facets of 'Psychology' as are grouped together in the present volume. What is rather more astonishing is to note, firstly, the full extent and range of Valéry's enquiries, which were begun, if not in a total vacuum of knowledge, certainly at a time when psychology was in its infancy as a human science; and secondly, that even as the subject evolved rapidly throughout the early part of the twentieth century, Valéry's approach remains rigorously personal, at times even, for certain readers, idiosyncratic, but always radically alternative in its determination to chal­lenge received wisdom.
Many of the notes reveal extensive readings on the subject and a close famil­iarity with the scientific journals of his day. It was perhaps inevitable that as the 'sciences of the mind' developed, they would adopt the methodologies of the pure sciences of the time, establishing their credentials through the specialism of focus. But always one encounters in Valéry's notes his determination to bring his own 'way of looking at problems, seeking to move the questions on to a higher level of integrated, systemic analysis. Nowadays we might be tempted to call his approach holistic, such is the insistence upon the living system as a complex whole, composed of many separate but interrelated factors -- some of which we are aware of, some of which have an autonomous function, unbeknown to us, but ever in the background -- all of which are constantly responding to their mi­lieu.
To read these passages is not only to be presented with a challenge to the orthodoxies of Valéry's own times, but to be brought up against some myths surrounding Valéry himself, which have tended to see him as irrevocably assert­ing the power of ratiocination, of mind over body, of intellect over emotion. In fact, analysis of the functioning of the mind encompasses conscious and uncon­scious responses alike; his recognition of the power of the imagination to pro­voke deeply visceral reactions leads him to interrogate the very nature of mental images; his fascination with dreams and dreaming is explored in parallel to the different approaches of Surrealism or Psychoanalysis. And while Descartes barely figures in these pages (unlike the scientific chapters in volume 4 and PHILO­SOPHY in volume 5), there is underlying all the ideas, a constant interrogation and rebuttal of Cartesian dualism. The understanding of the mind is seen as in­dissolubly linked to a deepening reflection upon the self's sensory and emotional responses both in the lived present and in the past-made-present that is memory, each of these reactions in turn rooted in the experiential encounter with the world around. Hence the profound significance of Valéry's triad: Corps-Esprit-­Monde, or CEM, representing the multi-faceted connections of Body-Mind­-World.
The first chapter PSYCHOLOGY, aims to analyse the nature of mind in terms of a theory of the operations it performs; Valéry describes it as a pattern of in­terlocking mechanisms that is constant and independent of its application and he frequently expresses this in terms of mathematical analogies: it is a geometry with no reference to particular events, or an algebra in which the particular values of x and y are subordinate to the established relations between x and y. SOMA AND CEM is concerned with the interaction of the mind and the body both with each other and with the context of the surrounding world in which they function; taken together they are the 'three cardinal points of knowledge', the 'three at­tributes or dimensions of sensibility'. ATTENTION considers the active process involved in the focusing of consciousness upon a particular phenomenon, a pro­cess which is seen by Valéry as a higher form of accommodation and coordin­ation. SENSIBILITY examines the role of the senses and the feelings in the recep­tion and decoding of impressions received from the physical world, which in­cludes the internal world of the body. MEMORY introduces the element of time, and here Valéry looks at the relation between past and present experiences and at the respective roles of mind and sense in the creation and assimilation of memories. Finally, DREAM examines the nature of mental activity in sleep, in the waking state, as well as in the crucial intermediate states of transition from one to the other.
Despite the differences of emphasis that these distinct fields of enquiry repre­sent, a certain underlying current permeates all the chapters and most clearly, perhaps, in the chapter DREAM. In his examination of the interaction of mind and sensibility, inner and outer worlds, Valéry's language frequently reveals a vi­sion of that interaction as more akin to a battle than a partnership. In that battle, although everything is staked on the victory of the mind, which is essentially the victory of the Self, he is obliged to confront the limits of that power and the full force of other factors and constraints, including of course, the unconscious ('This business of the unconscious really needs to be sorted out' he writes in PSYCH­OLOGY). What emerges, above all, is Valéry's sustained attempt to delineate the structures and movements of consciousness as an integral process that functions independently of the objects of consciousness. Each of the areas represented by the chapters in this volume serves as an opportunity to explore the limits of this activity, either as a particularizing feature, as with ATTENTION or MEMORY, or by contradistinction, as is the case with DREAM.
The extent to which these features are interrelated is most evident in the notes dating from the early 1900s which are to be found both in the manuscript Cahiers and in various parallel thematic dossiers and loose-leaf pages: among them, notes for a 'Mémoire sur l'Attention', a notebook entitled 'Somnia', dos­siers of notes titled 'Ręve', 'Surprise-Attente' and so on. The overall coherence of the research is very clear, not least through the circulation of passages between the different material forms, sometimes recopied by hand or on the typewriter, sometimes with variants or entirely new developments, but also through the hesitations over how to group the notes at the time of writing and later when Valéry was attempting to classify them.2 The notes in 'Somnia' for example (C, IV, 491-585) written between 1911 and 1914, are located here almost entirely in the chapter DREAM. They show that Valéry's prime concern is to determine, by means of discrimination between different states of awareness, the mental pro­cesses at work in the waking state, and thereby define the different phases of consciousness. The movement from one state to another is particularly fertile in enabling him to identify the overlap between the two systems of sleep and wakefulness. He is struck by the immediacy of experience in dreams: 'Modifica­tions of the kind that constitute and people dreams are produced without prepar­ation. What happens, happens without any links having to be established.' There is, in other words, no mediating conceptual superstructure, rather an im­mediate identification between the perceiving subject and the object of perception.
Questions of language are of crucial importance in this volume. For while the attempt to redefine terms in a language freed from arbitrary associations and cap­able of expressing pure analytical functions is a central part of the original pro­ject or 'System', Valéry encounters ultimate barriers of meaning when dealing with dreaming and sleep. What language can be used to define phenomena which, by definition, are beyond the realm of the referential system of language? When language is based on an arbitrary association of signifier and signified -- a notion that Valéry acknowledged long before Saussure's teachings became widely disseminated --, how can this be applied to dreams where 'there are no signs properly speaking' because there is no distinction between the sign and the meaning? Any attempt to speak about dreams or to describe sleep can only be realized by means of a translation into another language of a different order; but 'translation into the language of waking life necessarily destroys the true phenom­enological nature of the dream -- (like poetry translated into prose)'. It is, further­more, an aspect that Valéry constantly evokes to distinguish his own approach from that of Freud: 'These theories of Freud's are based on narratives told by one awake person to another. -- There's no way of checking them.' Nevertheless, as Malcolm Bowie has pointed out, Valéry is less distant from Freud than he ap­pears to acknowledge, in so far as both ultimately recognize the non-translatability of the unconscious. But where Freud held that the movements and urges of the unconscious might be grasped through the paradoxes, tensions and slips of language, and the Surrealists, that it might be glimpsed through the play of ludic contradictions, Valéry focuses insistently upon the impossibility of finding an adequate language and how that impossibility can, in itself, serve to define the way that consciousness itself proceeds. To define the limits and constraints of language, is to identify and separate out those features and processes of thinking and being that, however inextricably entwined with language they have become, are nevertheless distinct from it. Language, then, is one part of the problem; the other, is that of point of view; for, in dreams the observer is directly involved with what is being observed, and the phenomenon of observing itself has a direct and immediate influence.
However, rather than seeking to circumvent these difficulties by imposing some metadiscourse which might encompass these differences, Valéry's ap­proach is to incorporate this problematic into the enquiry, with the result that the writing shows an insistent refusal to synthesize, preferring instead to employ a system of definitions by negation. He thus identifies a series of contrasts and continuities between the states of dreaming and of wakefulness. In the waking state the self is confronted with doubts, surprises and questions, ('Robinson --stock-still before the print of a human foot in the sand... Who, when, where and how? What savage has passed along this shore?'), but in dreams such experiences are directly absorbed, for there is not the distance that permits the space of dual­ity. The waking state is characterized by constraints, anticipations, expectations, classifications, discriminations, while in dream no such perspectives arise: 'In dreams, there is no cancellation, no erasure of a part of our perceptions [...]. Nothing insignificant or trivial'. There is no room for intellectual distance or objection: 'Dream integrates -- What sleeps is negation.' Underpinning the analysis is the notion that the perception of reality is based upon a distancing effect and the dualism of consciousness, whereas in dream it is impossible to identify a clear distinction between the 'I' and the 'not-I', to the extent that nothing in dream is not-real, nothing is imaginary: 'So, law of the dream: Image and reality are the same thing.' If anything, dream implies a kind of intensification of the sense of the real; hence the oft-repeated formula 'in dreams everything is dreamed': the moment one is able to say that something is a dream, one is no longer dreaming. It is striking that, despite Valéry's overt mistrust of Surrealism, he is developing such ideas for himself some 13 years before the publication of the Manifeste du Surréaalisme.
Valéry's analysis does not, however, focus exclusively upon the distinction between waking and dream, and the presence or absence of a discriminating consciousness. Rather, he is interested in this aspect for what it might show about the way the living system works, which may be identified all the more clearly when it is working differently. He seeks to determine the nature of the network of forces in operation in a human being located in his own personal, intellectual and sensory space. He analyses the functions, the systems of accom­modation, the reflexes, the established and developing links, that keep the ma­chine of the thinking-body running: if the body is a living organism, then so too are the mind and the senses, which do not require us to be constantly aware of them. Indeed the idea of forgetting as a necessary feature of the human being's capacity to function is a recurrent theme: memory and forgetting are to be seen less as opposites and more as mutually dependent operations.
It is, in fact, Valéry's efforts to categorize the series of operations that underlie mental states that most distinguishes his psychology as 'something quite different from "Freudianism"', a feature acknowledged by Jacques Lacan who made refer­ence to Valéry on many occasions in his 'Seminars'5. Lacan was pursuing his studies in psychiatry and psychoanalysis at the same time as Julien Rouart, a cousin of Madame Valéry, and they would both visit Valéry in the rue de Ville-just to speak with him about the current state of psychiatry. When in 1932 Lacan completed his doctoral thesis, On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personal­ity, he presented a copy of the work to Valéry inscribed with the dedication: 'To Paul Valéry. To the master who initiated our youth into the dazzling play of the laws immanent within consciousness, I dedicate this too weighty attempt to rediscover them in the most irrational regions of the mind, with respectful apologies / Jacques Lacan / 25 Oct. 32.
PSYCHOLOGY
The notes gathered together in the chapter PSYCHOLOGY reveal not only the full extent and persistence of Valéry's reflections on the subject, but also a deter­mination to underline the specificity of his contribution to the subject. Some­thing very personal emerges in the affirmation of what he calls 'My psychology' or a 'true theory of consciousness', as well as in his frequent challenges to the ap­proaches of established psychologists. Valéry's ambitious programme seeks to map out an agenda for analysis that might lead to an overall theory of consciousness: 'Psychology. I don't know whether anyone has addressed the problem of psychology in the way I do. / I ask where you want to take it. What degree of precision is demanded. Whether language, whether even any language, is ade­quate?' Valéry himself uses categories that he recognizes to be part of the 'old vo­cabulary', such as 'Memory', 'Attention', 'Will', 'Sensation', 'Perception' -- all common features of the scientific discourse of the late nineteenth century -- but at the same time he strongly rejects the notion of separate faculties and seeks to distance himself from past approaches which have tended to treat such phenom­ena as discrete categories which can be subjected to exhaustive explanation or tackled according to a positivist analysis of cause and effect. He wants, instead, firstly to envisage these states as irretrievably interrelated, and secondly, to ob­serve them in operation, and he does this by bringing new analytical frames to bear upon them in a language adapted from mathematics and thermodynamics.
Valéry's rigorous self-observation is directed towards identifying mental processes in actu, in order to build up the elements of a phenomenology of the patterns of consciousness, to a degree that is more generalized than any of the particular in­stances of its manifestation: 'Crucial question in my psychology. What is con­served through all states? what is conserved in sleep, in dreams, in drunkenness, in terror, in the fervour of love? in madness?'
As the early hopes of formulating his integrated System receded -- the founding ambition of 1892 to formulate a single, overarching model of mental functioning, a systematized algebra of the mind generating a set of universal principles -- so, over the first decade of the twentieth century, the aspiration to establish a unique set of analytical tools based upon his own method and way of looking became all the more prominent. And 'My Psychology' clearly indicated a way forward: certain formalizing, integrative approaches are maintained while the material and processes become rooted in the experience of the perceiving self, viewed as a complex set of interrelated mechanisms.
Thought is envisaged as essentially unstable, in constant flux and transformation. It is subject to the effects of associations, instincts, affectivity, attention etc. It is at once constrained by all the conditions that have formed it, whether back­ground, learning, social and cultural influences, and yet remains boundlessly free and capable of infinite inventiveness. Cognitive approaches to the nature of thought conventionally identify features such as recall, association, understand­ing, second-level awareness etc., and attempt to analyse the particular character­istics of each. Valéry, on the other hand, attempts a broader, more far-reaching approach, arguing that each of these aspects of thought operates through a series of connections and substitutions which are governed by functional rules. What are the unifying principles underpinning the multiplicity of experiences? Such is the founding question that he never loses sight of: 'The mind sees only one thing at a time -- it operates by only one operation at a time... What is the unity of its operation or of its object? It's not a question of discovering it, but of inventing it.'
The question is approached in two ways: one by a process of abstraction in treating the object, the other through a series of mutually related antithetical concepts. Firstly, he argues, the substitutions and connections operate not upon the thing itself but upon mental images which are a kind of abstract construct or symbol standing in place of the object, and this process provides 'data' in a form that enables the mind to operate upon it. Valéry frequently explores questions relating to the processes of conceptualization in terms of the images that are formed in the mind and, in particular, uses the key word 'représentation' to de­note this, a term that signifies not only how something is represented but the picture of it created in the mind both as specific image and as concept. The pro­cesses themselves are analysed in terms of dynamic opposites, and here we en­counter a vocabulary which is characteristically Valéryan: continuity / discon­tinuity, rational / irrational relations, simultaneous / successive, heterogeneous / homogeneous. Each of the pairs implies the other and this approach enables Valéry to proceed with the analyses through a process of discrimination.
The ambition to theorize the workings of consciousness remains a driving feature of Valéry's analysis, but these are never synthesized into an integrated system. Rather, he explores different theoretical models that enable him to re­examine his fundamental questions from a variety of perspectives. We can ob­serve instances of this throughout the Notebooks: from the early 'Sketch of the theory of operations', to a theory of energy, a theory of reflexes, a theory of interventions, a theory of the machine, a 'Nervous theory', a return in 1927 to 'my old theory of the instrument' and, especially in the latter years, an insistence upon the value of his early theory of phases which addresses issues of continuity, discontinuity and the transition from one to another. Models adopted from mathematics and physics are explored through the notion of geodesics and the application of quantum theory. The conditions of visual perception become an important model for providing an account of consciousness, in so far as they imply complex processes of accommodation, awareness, but also crucially, non-awareness. 'The perfect product of vision,' he writes 'would be expressed by a zero of awareness of conditions. The eyes are excluded'. For Valéry recognizes that the living system depends not only upon conscious processes but upon an entire substructure of automatic reflexes, cyclic responses and unconscious acts. How does an experience consciously registered the first time of encounter, become integrated into reflex responses? How are these built up from childhood, he asks, prompted by the observation of his own children growing up and acquiring lan­guage? Such examples serve to remind us that the notes, however abstract they may appear, are rooted in the personal experience of self-observation and obser­vation of others. Human emotions are part of the system and throughout the notes, the theories are constantly tested against the responses of laughter and tears, for both are indicators of the limits of thought, a form of release for an idea or image that surpasses the capacity for thought.
SOMA AND CEM
'Any philosophical System in which the human body does not play a fundamen­tal role is inept, incapable.' Thus, Valéry affirms the distinct nature of his contri­bution, which serves to relativize the perception of him as being focused exclu­sively upon the higher rational purposes of the mind. Indeed, he is at pains to stress the wider context within which thought operates and upon which it de­pends for its existence: 'The mind is a moment of the body's response to the world.' Despite being one of the shortest of the chapters, SOMA AND CEM out­lines a singular approach, which does not affirm 'Soma' as the opposite pole to thought, but views it as an integral part of a triadic system. Valéry was from the earliest times concerned to identify the physical and sensory constraints upon thought as well as the physical and sensory responses that are generated. But the understanding of these as part of a wider perceptual process of being-in-the­world along with the more systematic use of the symbol CEM developed rather later. Valéry also refers to the triad using the Greek terms E (Soma), K (Kosmos) and Psy (Psyche) as three interconnecting units, one of physical identity, one of external reality and one characterized by change, possibility, doubt or even absence; all of the states of human experience can, he asserts, be viewed in terms of the interaction of these variables. He seeks, accordingly, to identify the dif­ferent sets of relationships which are in operation at any one time between body and world, body and mind, mind and world. But this does not mean that they make a harmonious whole: the world with which the body interacts is not the same world as that with which the mind connects, while the body is consistently viewed as something foreign to his own sense of being: 'My body" is as foreign to me as any object -- (if not even more so --) and is more intimate to me, more primarily and essentially "I" than any thought.' The response of the mind to the body moves between amazement, repulsion, scientific curiosity and ignorance. In one sense, the body is a finely tuned machine; Valéry's widespread contacts with the medical world meant that he was very familiar with the mechanisms at work beneath the skin and in his notes he analyses the functioning of the different organs of the body: the circulation of the blood, breathing, mus­cular activity, the stimulation and responses of nerves, bodily functions, the appendages and in particular the strange wonder that is the hand. At the same time, his own acknowledged nervous disposition and acutely sensitive emotions meant that he was always aware that man could not be reduced to a thinking brain in a well-tuned machine: the experiences of vertigo, nausea, pain, pleasure and the full power of the sensibility can never be overlooked.
Nor can the significance of the encounter with the world around be dis­missed; if any living creature, whether animal or human, is formed by its envir­onment, it also depends upon its struggle with the environment for what makes it most characteristically itself. One note in particular develops this idea with great insight (and uncanny anticipation of developments in medical science). Imagine, Valéry suggests, that a specially engineered environment could provide all that is required to keep the body of a living organism alive, relieving it of the urgent all-consuming necessity of assuring its own survival, then 'the animal would be strangely reduced', as instincts, nerves and muscles lose their purpose, and mind, emotion and actions cease to function. For 'the essential wonders of life' -- the passions, knowledge, creativity itself -- are the unstable, incalculable responses to the inadequacy of the environment.
The body, then, is an essential and equal constituent of the partnership, not though in a purely anatomical sense: it functions as 'my body' the more un­noticed it is. The 'real body' is envisaged as a set of almost abstract functions and formulas intimately associated with the impersonal notion of the pure self: 'The I is the more or less hidden role which the real body plays within consciousness'. The experience of the present is entirely dependent upon the phenomenological association of corporal sensation, perception of surrounding things and psychic production: Valéry's significant contribution is to argue that consciousness can only come into being through this triadic relationship.
ATTENTION
Valéry's reflections on the functioning of the mind took a particular turn in the early years of the century when the subject proposed for the philosophy section of the Prix Santour for 1905 was 'Attention'. In the event, the prize was not awarded that year; Valéry's own essay not only countered the current conven­tions of thinking as exemplified by the jury members themselves, but was sub­mitted incomplete. Nevertheless, the subject accorded with his current concerns as part of a network of themes including Surprise and Expectation ('Attente'). The dominant theorist of the time (and prominent jury member) was Théodule Ribot, whose work La Psychologie de l'attention (Paris, Alcan, 1888) was the major reference point and is one of the rare books to be cited by Valéry in his notes.? In spite of this indebtedness -- or perhaps, precisely, because of it -- Valéry characteristically sought to distinguish his own position and demarcate his own contribution. A significant difference is that, unlike the scientific works he read, his own focus was not upon the pathology of an abnormal medical situation, but on the operation of the normal living system; another difference lies in the fact that, as was seen with the previous chapter, his concern is always to consider the im­plications across the whole range of functions. Thus an increase in attention in one area may depend upon less perception in another, so that fixing the gaze upon one element means that all the others are eliminated. ATTENTION is seen as an exceptional state of limited duration, within the overall frame of operation, an instance of a higher, more focused form of accommodation, implying a par­ticular form of adjustment between the self and one's mental or physical milieu. Attention is a form of energy which requires preparation or draws on an accu­mulated quantum of energy and is timed to function at the appropriate moment. It is a concentration of effort which is unstable, cannot last beyond a certain point and is measured by the outcome as may be seen not only in the phenom­enon of attainment or non-attainment of the goal, but also in an ensuing loss of effort or fatigue. Thus, while Valéry attends in several instances to the phe­nomenon of inner attention as a purely mental activity, it is also investigated as a function involving other bodily systems; indeed, in so far as it involves a dif­ference of intensity, it is a property of the nervous system. Specific instances are analysed to illustrate the range of faculties which have to be coordinated and which lead, at the same time, to an exclusion of others. The act of threading a needle calls upon a visual value, a motor value, a mental picture of the achieved goal, an effort of will as well as, at a certain point, the act which gambles upon success. Whether threading a needle or writing a sonnet, attention coordinates the faculties while acting against probability. The image of the deep-sea diver is used to exemplify the specialized form of adaptation that attention represents: the physical constraints, the selectivity, the restrictions of time, the refusal to be distracted. Both examples are used to show that attention functions via an economy of effort, by reducing trial and error and working against probability to create greater certainty. A further aspect which is increasingly considered is that of visual attention as manifest in the fixing of the gaze. Ultimately, however, all these examples are brought back to the thinking process, to the higher degree of simultaneity and operational capacity of thought that, for the limited time it can be maintained, attention represents. What, Valéry asks primarily, are the factors determining 'the gaze of the mind'?
SENSIBILITY
SENSIBILITY explores a further dimension of 'My Psychology', namely the range of sensory and affective values that are inextricably bound to the experience of the lived life and form an integral part of the Body-Mind-World equation. We have already noted Valéry's own acute sensitivity and his attempts to deal with his own affective responses via a form of mental compartmentalization. The ten­sions and ambiguities appertaining to the term 'Sensibility' are particularly acute for the translator, in part because Valéry may seek to articulate affective states in terms of physical responses or nervous reflex actions, and in part because of the range of meanings encompassed by the term in French: at times it relates to the senses, at others to the feelings, and yet again, more specifically, to aspects of sensuality. Valéry appears to exploit to the full the room for manoeuvre which this allows, while emphasizing in all cases the potentiality it implies and which focuses less upon the nature of the response than on the capacity to respond. In time, Valéry comes to distinguish two types of sensibility, generalized and spe­cialized, the former an expression of an individual's general, inner, subjective capacity to respond, the latter more permanent and objective, a trace of the data arising from the interaction of the senses with the world around.
In the chapter on PSYCHOLOGY, Valéry notes that the brain is an electric en­gine, which leads him to evoke an 'electromagnetic' image of sensibility. Here the sensibility is seen as one element of a complex generator of energies; its role is to furnish the brain with stimuli derived from the outside world. This process is neither consistent nor predictable. Thinking of the unceasing activity of the mind, which is constantly modified by its contact with 'things', Valéry sees in­stability as the essential characteristic of both mind and sensibility. Although the sensibility is a constant presence, no single sensation can be either constant or continuous, and it can easily be seen that the impossibility of 'fixing' our sense impressions is a potent source of the instability of the mind. Moreover, though its role as provider of stimuli to the mind is essential, the sensibility is also a po­tential disturber of the peace, a limitation on the freedom of the intellect. The mind functions by acting 'against', by resisting the pull of emotional urges and the pentes, the inclinations and downward-leading paths of the sensibility. The mind works both on and against the sensibility by combining, organizing and simplifying the multiform impact and the incoherence of our sense impressions. It connects and classifies, whereas sensibility simply accumulates. But mind and sensibility together form the necessary condition of our knowing: we can know only what can be processed