Monsieur Teste [Paperback]

Paul Valéry (Author), Jackson Mathews (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Collected Works of Paul Valery | Publication Date: July 1, 1989

Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, Valéry's novel is profoundly personal. Monsieur Teste reflects Valéry'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 Valéry's Cahiers.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 179 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (July 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691018790
• ISBN-13: 978-0691018799
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #862,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High modernism and source of theater of the absurd, August 22, 2003

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Monsieur Teste (Paperback)

According to the introduction of Jackson Mathews, translator, Valery saw everything from the point of view of intellect. He was preoccupied with the pursuit of consciousness. The conscious mind was his obsessive center. Valery reports he had a reckless desire to understand. He says that writing requires a sacrifice of the intellect.

In the novel MONSIEUR TESTE it is stated that a superior man is a man who has deceived himself. The character tries to seek out inner masterpieces amid the brilliance of published discoveries.

My introduction to this work occurred years ago when I was a college student. I half understood the French in which the class was conducted. I struggled. I surmised the work was brilliant through the lecturer's description. I now ratify that judgment.

The work MONSIEUR TESTE is filled with arresting ideas. The narrator in the story seeks to know Monsieur Teste, to copy him. He is careful not to classify him among the mad.

Monsieur Teste says that he is at home in himself. In his room there is not a book in sight. There is a strong impression of the ordinary. Valery portrays a great refusal similar to my mind of that undertaken by Marcel Duchamp who in the latter years of his life refused to practice his art and only played chess. In fact there is a reference to chess in this work. Valery's work dates from 1896, predating, of course, the shape of the artistic career pursued by Marcel Duchamp.

Madame Teste describes her husband's moods as uncertain. She reports that their priest has compassion for Monsieur Teste, for a man so isolated. He says the Monsieur Teste's faces are innumerable. He believes that Monsieur Teste is cut off from both good and evil.

In his log book Monsieur Teste notes that he is not made for novels or plays. His goal seems to be an individual regulated by his own powers of thought. It is observed that in Paris the French have stored all of their ideas in one enclosure. In Paris there is a great concentration of literature, the sciences, the arts and politics. The chaos of a multitude of minds is tiring. "[S]uperiority is merely a solitude situated at the present limit of a species." Monsieur Teste is the man who thinks continually.

Up until a rather mature age Monsieur Teste is not aware of the singularity of his mind. He states he is not turned toward the world. His face is to the wall. An intellectual's end is a funeral march of thought. A snap shot from the notebooks yields the notion that admiration for genius is due to attributing to it the power of working miracles without fatigue. Another thought set out is that of trying to describe a man camped in his life. It is asserted that there is no perfect correspondence between feelings and the verbal-conceptual system.

Monsieur Teste thinks his mind is partly instinctive, partly scientific. His quickness of thought is in accord with absention from action he observes. Intelligence is the power of substitution. The mind moves by images. Images and change are inseparable. Education leads to including ones self with others. The most agonizing punishment to be imposed on anyone is to treat him with rigorous objectivity. The brain, too much occupied internally, deals brutally with external things. Monsieur Teste is a mystic and a physicist of self-awareness. The statement that the isolated eye amuses itself gives a flavor of the book. Notes are found at the back of the book.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Most Excellent Perspective, April 5, 2011

By 

David C. Baird "theunspokenyes . com" (pittsburgh, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Monsieur Teste (Paperback)

Valery is at genius level here. Teste is a wonderful book. You will learn a very insightful perspective when reading..

4 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ancient Truth surfaces again, April 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Monsieur Teste (Paperback)

This book gives us what paul Valery thinks, and what he thinks is the forgotten basis of many thoughts