le pli de valéry

et la figuration du monde perçu

tim kammasch 1
For Verena Baumann-Kind

Die Sprachen vorzüglich gewinnen aber an Kraft, Reichthum und Gestaltung

durch das Zusammenstossen grosser und selbst contrastierender Verschieden-
heit, da auf diesem Wege ein reicherer Gehalt menschlichen Daseyns, schon zur
Sprache geformt, in sie übergeht. Denn dies nur ist ihr realer Gewinn, der in
ihnen, wie in der Natur, aus der Fülle schaffender Kräfte entsteht, ohne dass
der Verstand die Art dieses Schaffens ergründen kann, aus der Anschauung, der
Einbildungskraft, dem Gefühl. Nur von diesen hat sie Stoff und Bereicherung
zu erwarten; von der Bearbeitung durch den Verstand, wenn dieselbe darüber
hinausgeht, dem Stoff seine volle Geltung in klarem und bestimmtem Denken
zu verschaffen, eher Trockenheit und Dürftigkeit zu fürchten.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

1 La feuille blanche, from: Denis Bertholet, Paul Valéry. Die Biographie, Berlin 2011,
Abbildung Nr. 24. © Photo: Archive of the Family Valéry. 1 The author wishes to thank Chris Kjelsen ([email protected]) for the English translation.

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 valéry’s fold and the figuration of primary perception own proves amorphous, yet equiprimordially brings forth thoughts
In retrospect, architecture’s orientation towards semiotics has yielded and their articulation as signs by conjoining both. The sign is a unit
no inspiring impulses, no reliable model for architecture ; the built constituted from the union of two demarcations occurring in parallel
postmodern symbols are not deemed innovative in terms of their form and which, as de Saussure states in his Cours de Linguistique générale
– rather, those exalted figures so familiar through the representations (1916) [fig. 2], as signifier and signified, are its two sides : what a
of “architecture parlante” were merely reiterated within them. Hardly paradoxical unit that forms itself but only through the connecting
surprising, then, that the reaction to these experiments with form of two demarcations. The logos manifested in the sign through its
– certainly influenced not only by post-structuralist discourses on demarcations in materiality, unlike what Genesis has us believe, in this
signs and which, particularly when produced in their one size fits all case does not precede its incarnation by previously hovering over the
marketing-oriented fashion, were far from stimulating any Eros and waters, but configures itself at the very same moment as the materiality
having any vitalising effect – manifests itself in a tendency towards of the sign vehicle takes shape.
more practical relevance, especially in the German-speaking part
of Switzerland. Admittedly, bearing in mind the actually prevalent In this concept of the sign, which is the differential core theorem
conditions of the building sector, this practicality all too often of the structuralist semiotics of de Saussure, and all the more so in
sinks into the banality of the value-neutral Swissboxes which have the guise of its poststructuralist modifications by Derrida, there is
nearly infinite uses except the function of being a home. The only meanwhile already a one-sided narrowing of the focus on the value of
justification for taking another look at language, as attempted in the sign (“valeur”) which, according to the aforementioned theorists,
the present essay, in order to improve the architectonic quality of is constituted in a purely differential manner. The rekindled attention
residential dwellings as well as industrial buildings is not to yet devoted to the linguistic sign may contribute to a better understanding
again use the symbolic sign as the measurement gauge : it is strictly of architecture’s potential for communication, inasmuch as it re-directs
speaking suitable neither as a model in the literal resp. in the figurative the gaze on what is also constitutive of meaning in language yet has
sense nor in terms of the purely differential constitution postulated been neglected by structuralist semiotics, namely the bodily, sensually
for it and from which by analogy in architecture space-generating perceived aspect of language, i.e. the material part of its configuration. In
structures and their deconstruction could be derived. But, ultimately, other words: if it is to be demonstrated that the language of architecture
the tertium comparationis was missing for this kind of analogical is in no way intended to be understood merely metaphorically, then the
conclusion. Not that such a tertium comparationis could not be found architecture of language will need to be considered.
within language, but the structuralist and post-structuralist concept The structuralists’ and poststructuralists’ misunderstanding of the
of the sign, in which the linguistic sign is conceived of as a purely linguistic sign, its reduction to the “valeur” (de Saussure) resp. “marque”
differentially constituted value (“valeur”), fails to provide a basis for a (Derrida), is ultimately founded on the reduction of experience to only
constructive analogy with architecture, as it really undervalues if not what can be read intellectually, as advocated by scientism. The primary
outright denies the condition – that is de facto essential for the genesis perception (aesthesis), which accompanies – always unnoticed – every
of the sign – of the aesthetic reception of the materiality of the sign reading and indeed every scientific mode of cognition that proceeds
vehicle. Thus the one aspect of language that is really cognate with methodologically according to categories, is omitted. It is on this
architecture, namely what Wilhelm von Humboldt in his 1820 work primary perception that is founded even the most abstract of scientific
Upon Writing and its Relation to Speech 2 had already highlighted as theories and the space it perceives cannot be mapped in the three
its distinguishing attribute, cannot really come into focus : the double metric dimensions that represent to us space as a physical volume
configuration resp. articulation and the constraints imposed on it which we, as epistemological subjects, are facing, just as we would
by stream of consciousness and materiality. Each aspect taken on its a picture whose representation from a central perspective conveys
2 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Upon Writing and its Relation to Speech (orig. Über die
this very same concept of space to us. Primary perception happens
Buchstabenschrift und ihren Zusammenhang mit dem Sprachbau, 1824), German text in : pre-reflectively as background perception and it happens coincidentally
Werke in Fünf Bänden, vol. 3 : Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie, Darmstadt 1963, 82-112, 99
(= Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, 122, for the quote used as motto : vol. V, 127). as a kinaesthetic and synaesthetic-corporeal experience. To what

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extent are these spatial-atmospheric qualities, experienced through this thus also accorded significant importance in the social production of
primary perception, captured by the programs that nowadays generate space, including its transformation 6, yet only inasmuch as it represents
digital visualization for architectonic interventions ? To what extent is well-established concepts of space. Its concrete and performative effect
this perception guiding the design of today’s urban spaces ? on the corporeal-kinaesthetic perception of space falls outside of
Lefebvre’s focus. His model, in the final analysis and notwithstanding
A look at present-day remaining spaces in cities and suburbs makes all protestations to the contrary, remains too abstract to serve as the
the existing shortcomings quite obvious. And yet the problem cannot source of insights for a reappraisal of architectonic communication.
be traced back solely to the role that digitalised space models play in It performs in the same theoretical spheres as Chomsky’s model of
the design process. Already back in 1974, when analogue approaches competence and performance that Lefebvre invokes as analogon.
and methods were still predominantly determining architectonic
design, Henri Lefebvre for example criticized in La Production In contrast thereto, the phenomenological analysis of Ernst Cassirer
de l’Espace the loss of substance of the concrete perception of space and Maurice Merleau-Ponty focus on the level of immediate perception
during its conceptual process : of space, with primary perception being the particular emphasis of their
epistemic interest. Both share Lefebvre’s point of view in affirming the loss
Comme toute pratique sociale, la pratique spatiale se vit avant de se concevoir ; of the essence of experience in the course of its formalisation 7. Whereas
mais le primat spéculatif du conçu sur le vécu fait disparaître avec la vie, la Lefebvre in the end entrusts the analysis of the subjective perception of
pratique ; il réplique mal à l’inconscient du vécu comme tel 3. space to empirical research, Cassirer’s “phenomenology of pure expressive
Lefebvre’s analysis of space addresses the issue of space as a social experiences” 8 also begins with the symbolic transformations of primary
construct and in particular deals with its production within the experience through language and images, but thereafter switches the
framework of neo-capitalism 4. His model of the dynamics of space focus of the investigation diametrally around and, based on this “region
production is tripartite, with (social) space emerging as the construct of a of the ‘objective mind’”, seeks by means of a “deductive ‘reconstructive’
social practice, the “pratique spatiale” (1). In this approach, the concepts approach to gain access to the area of ‘subjectivity’” 9.
of space prevalent in a society – also in the way they are represented in the The issue we are addressing, namely the language of architecture and the
built infrastructure (“représentations de l’espace” resp. “espace conçu”, 2) ways in which it expresses its spatial-atmospheric qualities in the primary
– play a role as important as the space lived in consciously and experience, depends entirely on the possibility of being able to document
unconsciously by the members of society (“espaces de représentation” this primary perception of space in a non-distortive manner – without
resp. “espace vécu”, 3). According to Lefebvre, its “interaction any losses – and thus to raise it to awareness. We will follow the lead of
dialectique” 5 is to be thought of, by analogy with the model of Cassirer and Merleau-Ponty as they pinpoint in their work the structuring
successful communication, as the interplay of linguistic competence organisation of space, a pivotal practice for architecture, as being the main
and the linguistic performance that ensures the situation-specific feature of primary communication and the perception associated thereto 10.
application in Chomsky’s transformational grammar. By suggesting Merleau-Ponty even goes so far as to postulate physical expressions and
a relationship of reciprocal conditions for the two spatial dimensions gestures as “first language” 11. These forms of communications are context-
involved in the production of space, i.e. “espace conçu” and “espace bound, they are not based on semantic units, which would be discrete
vécu”, Lefebvre espouses the view of a non-unilaterally determined meaningful elements, but on the perception of “diacritical signs”, i.e.
base – superstructure theorem that contrasts with classic historical physical marks that are purely differentiating 12.
materialism. However, based upon the concept of the “espace vécu”,
6 Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace [1974], Paris 2000, 52.
the perception of space is differentiated merely according to social role 7 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen, vol. iii, 10. ed. Darmstadt 1994, 82;
types and is considered only in its symbolic reshaping through the Maurice Merleau-Ponty, « Exposé pour la candidature au Collège de France », in: Revue de
Métaphysique et de Morale, lxvii [1962], 401-409, 403.
adequate (en)coding of language and collective images. Architecture is 8 Ernst Cassirer, op cit., 79.
9 Ernst Cassirer, op cit., 78.
3 Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace [1974], Paris 2000, 44. 10 Ernst Cassirer, op cit., 72.
4 See : Henri Lefebvre, op cit., chap. 14, 15 a. 17. 11 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 406.
5 Henri Lefebvre, op cit., 48. 12 Cf Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 406. Cassirer counters this with the primacy of seeing

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 The Gestalt – Merleau-Ponty here uses the phrase “figure du monde
perçu ” – that is perceived by the primary perception as corporeal-
kinaesthetic reading 13 is, according to him, buried under subsequent
conceptual and scientific layers of perception and interpretation
[...] elle est ensevelie sous les sédiments des connaissances ultérieures 14.

An appropriate linguistic transcription of our primary experience is,

according to him, comparable to the task of an archaeologist
[...] il nous faut redécouvrir la figure du monde perçu, par un travail comparable
à celui de l’archéologue [...] 15.

The occultation observed by Merleau-Ponty goes hand-in-hand with

the abstraction away from the original experience as it occurs through
the secondary, objectifying process of cognition. The process of
objectification is characteristic not only for scientific communication
but even for colloquial language, and linked to it is the shift of
perspective from first to third person. A toothache, as Wittgenstein
said, does not communicate itself through a linguistic statement, it
is rather solely the experience of the person suffering from it.16. And
yet the experience of pain can be made understandable by means
of countenance and gestures to all but those fellow members of the
species suffering from an utterly underdeveloped sense of empathy.
No words are needed: the cry, the facial expression, the posture of
the body are all sufficiently intelligible, at least they are not more
ambiguous than verbal communication. Provided that the experience
of aesthetic qualities is equally tied to the first person perspective,
although it is – as Kant has claimed – inextricably linked with an urgent
desire to share this experience inter-subjectively 17, the archaeologist
mentioned by Merleau-Ponty would have to perform the feat of
the gestalt in the immediate aisthesis : first the face, the whole of a gestalt and its character are
recognised. (Ernst Cassirer, op cit, vol. iii, 10. ed. Darmstadt 1994, 80f., 85). Yet the facial
recognition also happens in split seconds by capturing reference points, as saccade movements
of the eye, by means of pattern recognition (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit. 402) providing
identification so that the gestalt recognition is based on reading points of difference – which
can be easily demonstrated with visual puzzles (Kippfiguren) in which the immediate recognition
of form falters, since the points of reference accessed during the reading process do not allow
an unambiguous identification. Its ambiguity reveals seeing as the reading of those diacritic
signs described by Merleau-Ponty (see e.g. Wittgenstein’s rabbit-duck head illusion, in : Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Critical edition, publ. by Joachim Schulte et al.,
Frankfurt/M. 2001, 1025.
13 « [...] la perception est ainsi l’acte commun de toutes nos fonctions motrices et affectives, non
moins que des sensorielles [...] »,Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 401-409, 403.
14 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 403.
15 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 403.
16 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Critical edition, publ. by Joachim 2 Double articulation resp. composition based on ‘connecting’ cuts in the amorphous
Schulte et al., Frankfurt/M. 2001, §665, p. 984. materiality of sound and the vague flow of thinking, from: Ferdinand de Saussure,
17 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft [1790], §§ 19-20. Cours de linguistique générale, Lausanne and Paris 1916.

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 relating his discoveries in a language capable of making communicable
to others the subjective experience of the first person point of view.
And indeed, in his letter of application to the Académie Française,
the phenomenologist does not offer the prospect in his future œuvre
(La Prose du Monde) of following the methodological model of
archaeology. The latter may serve as the adequate analogon for the
phenomenological exposure of the first “figure du monde perçu ”: for
insights into the adequate communication of this figure, however,
Merleau-Ponty looks to art, more precisely to the “communication en
littérature” 18. It is precisely within the variations of the syntax and
morphology of everyday language, as they are found in poesy, in the
“modulation particulière de la parole” 19, that Merleau-Ponty supposes
the strategies that will enable the successful métamorphoses of the
perceived quality of the lived experience in the primary experience
into the forms of more complex symbolic communication 20.
Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the performative potential of a language
displayed in poetry, which not merely access meanings but conjures
them 21, coincides with the poetic ideal of an onomatopoetic idiom.
According to this ideal, the poet’s craft seeks to make the primary
experience come alive for the recipient through linguistic means in
such an authentic way as to thus render the medium of language
transparent, so to speak, and to allow the experience it communicates
to be revealed directly resp. to make it a firsthand experience with
the text itself. Precisely because the phenomenologist considers
the “evidence of the perceived object as being based in the concrete
view of the texture of its qualities” 22, it only seems consistent for
him to inquire into a structurally analogous mapping of this texture
in language and to hope to find the latter in the “variation of forms
of language and narratives” 23, i.e. in the arrangement of words and
sentences. It is definitely an opportunity that Merleau-Ponty missed
when in his announced text La Prose du Monde (which alas could
only be published posthumously in 1969, unfinished) he paid scant
attention to the poetological work of Paul Valéry, but reduced the

18 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, « Exposé pour la candidature au Collège de France »,

in : Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, lxvii [1962], 401-409, 406.
19 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 406.
20 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 408.
21 « La communication en littérature n’est pas simple appel de l’écrivain à des significations
qui feraient partie d’un a priori de l’esprit humain: bien plutôt elle les y suscite par entraînement
ou par une sorte d’action oblique. » Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 403.
22 « [...] l’évidence de la chose perçue tient à son aspect concret, à la texture même
de ses qualités [...] », Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 404.
3 Paul Valéry, Serpentine Line, from: Cahier 3, 1943, ed. by Marie Bourjea, Saint Clément de 23 « variation systématique et insolite des modes du langage et du récit, ou des formes
Rivière, 2006. littéraire existantes », Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit., 406.

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latter to the common cliché of an idealistic rationalist, a classic (i.e. not
read through the eyes of Merleau-Ponty) Cartesian 24. This disdain is
all the more surprising since Valéry’s poetological work, as a matter of
fact, anticipates the research program announced by Merleau-Ponty in
his text seeking admission to the Académie Française at the beginning
of the 1950s, namely : the quest for a valid linguistic expression for
the “figure du monde perçu” in poesy. It is just this field of the poetic
possibilities that Valéry has tilled in his work and in his poetological
reflections, just like Poe, Baudelaire and Mallarmé did before him and
in whose tradition he sees his own poetry, but also in those poetological
reflections he jotted down over decades in his Cahiers or published
during his lifetime in the form of lectures and essays 25.Unnoticed by
Merleau-Ponty, Valéry actually precedes him particularly in the way in
which he attempts to implement the ideal of an onomatopoetic idiom
not through the onomatopoetic quality of individual words (“Tout le
monde sait bien à quel point sont rares les accords du son et du sens”) 26,
but, as the phenomenologist suggests, through the arrangement of the
words, i.e. through their configuration and sequence.
By using such architectonic strategies of language, Valéry’s poetics
aim to evoke an “état poétique” in his reader, i.e.
le sentiment d’une illusion ou l’illusion d’un monde dans lequel les événements,
les images, les êtres, les choses, s’ils ressemblent à ceux qui peuplent le monde
ordinaire, sont, d’autre part, dans une relation inexplicable, mais intime, avec
l’ensemble de notre sensibilité 27.

In thinking his ideal of a “poésie pure” ultimately unattainable

and yet in aligning his poetic work with these rules, Valéry in his
poetological reflections proves himself not a dreamer but a poet who
is also a philosopher. In his self-criticism vis-à-vis his own efforts to
make the “figure du monde perçu” communicable without any loss
of content or intensity, Valéry shows a greater attitude of scepticism
than the scientist Merleau-Ponty. He even goes further : as Paul de
Man has shown, Valéry stages the incongruence between rhythm and
modulation of the words and the images communicated by them in
one of his most famous poems, Le Cimetière marin and thus transforms
his scepticism towards realising the “poésie pure” into poesy 28. These
24 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Prose du Monde, Paris 1969, 31ff.
25 Paul Valéry, « Situation de Baudelaire » [1924], in : Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 598-613, 612f.,
– « Fragments des Mémoires d’un Poème » [1937], Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 1464-1491, 1470f.
26 Paul Valéry, « Poésie pure » [1928], in: Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 1456-1463, 1462.
27 Paul Valéry, op cit., [1928], 1459. 4 Serpentine Figure from the Correspondence of Paul Valéry with Jean Voilier,
28 Paul de Man, « Postdoctoral Essay on Symbolism » (c. 1960), in : The Paul de Man Notebooks, Letter dating from 16. 7. 1942, from: Lettres à Jean Voilier, 1937-1945, Paris 2014, 313.

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 self-critical reservations admittedly do not prevent him from describing
in detail the onomatopoetic ideal and the path towards its approximate
realisation. The poet’s task, according to Valéry, does not consist in
inventing a completely new language – who would understand it ? –
but in achieving within everyday language (“au moyen d’une matière
d’origine vulgaire” 29), the idea of a more subtle language (“une certaine
idée du langage, plus subtile […] et plus précise […]” 30), through the
coming together of the known parts in a new hitherto unknown
arrangement (“un ordre artificiel et idéal ” 31), in the ideal case of the
“poésie pure” even to a “jeu des figures [qui] contiendrait la réalité du
sujet” 32. It is thus for him the “relations des mots, ou plutôt des relations
des résonances des mots entre eux...” 33, which in an invisible game of
elusive configurations produce, as performative emergence, an excess
of meaning, the “effets” which in turn re-evoke within the recipient an
“état émotif ” 34.
The task of an “exploration de tout ce domaine de la sensibilité qui
est gouverné par le langage” 35 lies at the core of Paul Valéry’s epistemic
interest and his poetic-poetological oeuvre. The “métamorphose” of
the first immediate manifestations of facial expressions and gestures
– which belong entirely to, and in their communicational value
depend on, their concrete situational occurrence – into symbolic,
context-transcending language, which is described by Cassirer and
Merleau-Ponty 36, can be found operationalized in Valéry’s attempt
to achieve the onomatopoetic ideal. The compositions calculatedly
structure the textual content architectonically to create situations and
sequences in such a manner that the text, even within its tiniest inter-
action (or its disintegration) of semantics, rhythm and sound does not
merely designate its contents but rather stages it configuratively. Thus
Valéry, in his attempts, relies on a text’s gesture – as communicated to
the reader during the reading process as non explicitly stated but rather
as primary paralinguistic experience – which is effective by means of
its architectonic composition ; the text (through its not purely linear
sequential configuration) entices the reader to a movement, which
ed. by Martin McQuillan, Edinburgh 2014, 48-61, 53f.
29 Paul Valéry, « Poésie pure » [1928], in: Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 1456-1463, 1463.
30 Paul Valéry, « Fragments des Mémoires d’un Poème » [1937], Œuvres, I, Paris 1957,
1464-1491, 1470.
31 Paul Valéry, « Poésie pure » [1928], in: Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 1456-1463, 1463.
32 Ibidem.
33 Paul Valéry, op cit., [1928], 1456-1458.
34 Paul Valéry, op cit., [1928], 1458-59.
35 Paul Valéry, op cit., [1928], 1458.
36 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen, vol. iii, 10. ed. Darmstadt 1994, 83 ;
5 Laurence Sterne, Narrative Lines, Leben und Ansichten von Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, « Exposé pour la candidature au Collège de France »,
German Translation and ed. by Michael Walter, Frankfurt/M. 2006, 543. in : Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, lxvii [1962], 401-409, 405.

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extends the gestures into the realm of symbolic language 37. The “jeu
des figures” is thus to be taken quite literally. Valéry’s poetics sparks
off at this corporeal-spatial level of gestural language, which – itself
unspoken as configuration – forms the foundation of the explicit
meaning of the text :
Mais la véritable force s’impose par la structure et ne demande rien. Elle contraint
les hommes sans les voir 38.

Yet in its pointed emphasis this dictum of Valéry’s misses the main
point, if constellation is to generate “résonances” : the sound-producing
body and the materiality of the linguistic expression. An excerpt from
Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory might illuminate the thought voiced by
Valéry on the resonances between words in the intersection of mind
resp. immaterial form and matter that happens in the literary text :
The spirit of artworks is their immanent mediation, which transforms their
sensual moments and their objective arrangement ; this is mediation in the
strict sense that each and every element in the artwork becomes manifestly
its own other. […] nothing counts in artworks that does not originate in the
configuration of their sensual parts ... 39.

Merleau-Ponty bases his hopes on the “figure du monde perçu”, the

first manifestation of facial expressions and gesture of the human body
he deemed authentic, and which makes possible a sublimated elevation
of the primal experience and situationally communicated content of the
“first language” into symbolic language through the understanding of its
“systematic gesticulation” 40. This “figure du monde perçu”, although it

37 For Merleau-Ponty as for Valéry, a special place is attributed in the genesis of language
to the sensory-motor sensation, its manifestation in facial expressions and gestures, resp. to
the attempt to make an état poétique communicable in a most authentic way. For both of
them, the body thus fulfils a pivotal function between perception and first expression.
Merleau-Ponty ascribes to it a double fonction de notre corps (Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
op cit. [1962], 405) because in its ambiguous appearance, it is both impression and expression
of what befalls it and what it undergoes – it is the first and situation-bound sign (ibid. 405f.).
In Valéry’s opinion, too, the moving body is at the beginning of the formation of the sign,
since on the side of its sender as well as of its recipient, the état poétique results first
naturallement et spontanément d’un certain accord entre notre disposition interne, physique
et psychique, et les circonstances (réelles ou idéelles) que nous impressionent.
(Paul Valéry, « Poésie pure » [1928], in: Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 1456-1464, 1459.). This view
is supported by the latest research in anthropological linguistics and the insights of
expression theories. Hence, the gesture occupies the middle ground, ontologically as well as
phylogenetically, between symbolic and pre-symbolic communication,
Cf. Michel Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication, Cambridge (Mass.), London 2008;
Mathias Jung, Der bewusste Ausdruck. Anthropologie der Artikulation, Berlin 2009, 29.
38 Paul Valéry, « Fragments des Mémoires d'un Poème » [1937], in: Œuvres, I, Paris 1957,
1464-1491, 1472.
39 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, transl. by Robert Hullot-Kentor, London i. a. 1997, 120.
40 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, « Exposé pour la candidature au Collège de France », 6 Frontispiece from William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty (London 1753), ed. by Ronald
in : Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, lxvii [1962], 401-409, 407. Paulson, New Haven / London 1997.

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 may not represent the “point d’appui”, does constitute the “figure d’appui”
of Valéry’s poetics. As such an elemental trope, it is even inscribed in the
poet’s face and this not in a quasi-abstract form but quite physically :
as a fold on the brow of the poet. It can be seen in a photography,
undated but probably taken around 1935 41 and reproduced in the
biography by Denis Bertholet [fig 1] 42. The caption says “La Feuille
blanche” and it is not clear who contributed it. There is a consistency
to the caption, in that this photograph is not merely a portrait. Paul
Valéry will be recognised in it only by someone who already knows
what he looks like. It would be nearly impossible to identify him on the
basis of this photograph only. The caption labels it a situation or rather
its representation : “La Feuille blanche” signifies here as much as before
the symbolic – in this case the written – language, not before language
per se. The situation as such communicates itself by means of the upper
body bent over the empty page and the head supported by the hands.
This is not about Paul Valéry. The fact that the pose is immortalised
by the photograph – and we know it shows the celebrated poet Paul
Valéry – expresses the following: it is about the situation of the poet per
se, the moment of incipient coming (in)to (symbolic) language, when
the poet is not yet author but rather sufferer, experiencer, recipient – an
archetype, handed down from the very origins of poetry. Thus, at the
beginning of the Odyssey, its narrator invokes the muses to tell him the
story of the much-travelled man.
Here now, as a picture within the picture, the poet appears as the
first receiver with not even a writing implement at hand. And, strictly
speaking, it is by no means certain that what will manifest itself
on the page will be writing at all. In the case of Valéry, that could
be drawings or sketches, such as small figures like for example that
sweeping line found so often in the margins of the Cahiers or also in
his letters. These meandering lines form, roughly, the figure of the
furrow that stands out on the poet’s brow. Its location, the head, seems
to confer onto it the status of a first sign. Yet this is only one possible
beginning: the photograph presents the entire program of the genesis
of the verbal sign, as reflected by Cassirer, Merleau-Ponty and Valéry
himself, as well as showing the rare case of a happy transformation
of the experienced expression into symbolic language. This becomes
41 This year is suggested by the comparison with a (albeit only vaguely dated) photograph
from most probably the same series of pictures, see the caption according to Getty images on
the slip-case of « Ich grase meine Gehirnwiese ab » – Paul Valéry und seine verborgenen Cahiers,
publ. by Thomas Stölzel, Fankfurt/M. 2011.
7 Plate 1 from : William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty (London 1753), ed. by Ronald Paulson, 42 Denis Bertholet, Paul Valéry. Die Biographie, Berlin 2011, fig. 24 (the image rights
New Haven / London 1997. belong to the archives of the Valéry family).

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clearer if we consider the fold using the three categories of signs in
Peirce’s semiotics. It becomes apparent that this figure falls into all
three categories and yet, at the same time, its meaning cannot be
determined unambiguously under any of them. This metamorphosis
can be called successful if ‘discrepancy’ resp. ‘ambiguity’ is understood
in the original meaning, i.e. as communicated so far through facial
expressions and gestures. That this seems to be the case is already
suggested by the facial expression, the line as an imaging icon : it is
both an expression as well as, simultaneously, a physical impression,
and it thus exemplifies the quite positive ambiguity of the first
sign, our body, as stated by Merleau-Ponty 43. The phenomenologist
recognises therein the expression of a “spontaneity which manifests
the seemingly impossible, [by] combining the heterogeneous
elements” 44 – an assessment which in this particular case of the mimic
facial expression on Valéry’s brow is also borne out by its form, the
wavy line (see below). With it as index, uncertainty subsists as to
which cause it actually refers to : is the brow furrowed because of the
pressure exerted by the hands or by the heaviness of the thoughts ? Is
the furrow thus an indication of an emotion or an external physical
impression ? The hands, which signify making and creating, i.e. the
poein – also that of the poet – thus suggest another beginning of
poetry, an externally received impulse. From the cigarette held in
the left hand, thin wisps of smoke rise which in turn can serve as a
quote from Mallarmé’s poem Toute l’ âme résumée (1895) in which the
smoke rising from a smouldering cigar illustrates the dissolution and
spiritualisation of matter, which suggests accordingly a dynamic, in
the opposite direction of the materialisation of the thoughts on the
white sheet of paper. A contrast thus emerges on Valéry’s brow as the
dual beginnings of poetry.
The figure of the fold, essential for its figuration into the symbolical,
is furthermore quite striking: its wavy line is caused, on the purely
physical plane, by two opposite force vectors (a heavy head and
supporting hands/fingers). Yet the pressure and counter-pressure of head
and hands do not necessarily induce the wavy figure of the fold. Rather,
this is caused by the odd spreading of the fingers which does not seem
necessary but instead takes for a walk, as it were, the force of gravity
43 « la double fonction de notre corps » and « bonne ambiguïté », Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
« Exposé pour la candidature au Collège de France », in : Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,
lxvii [1962], 401-409, 405, 409.
44 « Mais il y dans le phénomène de l’expression une ›bonne ambiguïté‹, c’est-à-dire une spon-
tanéité qui accomplit ce qui paraissait impossible, à considérer les éléments séparés, qui réunit
en un seul tissu la pluralité des monades, le passé et le présent, la nature et la culture. » 8 Plate 2 from : William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty (London 1753), ed. by Ronald Paulson,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op cit. [1962], 401-409, 409. New Haven / London 1997.

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 that acts with physical necessity – if only to the extent that the head is
less weighty in a physical sense than gravid with the thoughts of a great
thinker – and thus imparts to the fold its peculiar moving form. While
the fold refers mimetically through its shape to the wave, with which it
shares the characteristic (seen now as index) of being the visible result of
the antagonistic interplay of two opposing forces, it is – as a wavy line –
not only a double expression of these two forces but, due especially to its
form, a third one as well: it is the transformation of absolute necessity into
free movement and is thus as a symbolic expression of artistic spontaneity,
and this even in the pose fixed permanently in the photograph.
In order to accept Valéry’s posture in front of the photographer’s lens
as a pose, it is assumed that in the pose one can recognise a gestural code
common to European culture, which indeed is the case. It is enough to
visualise famous paintings of thinkers. The self-touching of hand and
head has become an iconographic standard phrase for reflection, varia-
tions of which can be brought to mind in several instances in Raphael’s
School of Athens (1509-11) and which should be well-known in the
guise of Rodin’s Le Penseur (1880-82). To recognise a pose in Valéry’s
photograph encourages the comparison with other photographs of him.
He handled the medium of photography, which for his generation was
still quite recent, with a very deliberate awareness. The poet must have
been fascinated by photography’s direct reproduction of the gestures
and facial expressions, so central to his own poetics, and especially as a
means for self-observation and self-knowledge. As an amateur painter
also of himself, he knows how to project himself. In this respect, his
idols, friends who were poets or artists, served as model. Whether it
is Baudelaire, Degas, Renoir or Mallarmé who was photographed by
Nadar – all their poses were still merely copied from portrait painting.
Thus the circle is closed and a long tradition of symbolic language
finds itself mapped within the supposedly first signs, i.e. the pictured
facial expressions and gestures. The metamorphosis of the sign thus
never starts at a point zero. The figure of the fold itself, the wavy line
on the brow of the poet, is itself a quote.
For Valéry’s poetics, the moving line is anything but marginalia, in
the shape of a snake it even coils itself around the handle of an épée
he designed himself on the occasion of his admission to the Académie
Française (1925). Bertholet simply declares it the emblem of Valéry’s
research 45. In this he agrees with an assessment expressed more than
9 Variations of the Line, Paul KLEE, Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre. Faksimilierte half a century earlier by Paul de Man. The comparatist of later years
Ausgabe des Originalmanuskripts von Paul Klees erstem Vortragszyklus am staatlichen Bauhaus
Weimar 1921/22, ed. by Jürgen Glaesemer, Basel 1999. 45 Denis Bertholet, Paul Valéry. Die Biographie, Berlin 2011, 417.

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deemed the drawings and engravings of the amateur Valéry significant
enough for him to publish them already in 1948 in small runs and
numbered copies. In the accompanying text, which is one of his earliest
detailed essays concerning a poet of the Symbolisme movement, de
Man comments on the ever-present snakelike line which Valéry never
got tired of committing to paper in all possible variations [fig 3 & 4],
sometimes in concrete form as a serpent, sometimes between the lines
of a text, reduced to a mere line, in more abstract form as snakelike or
wavy figure, “[q]uelques hachures, une tache, un pli d’ombre suffiront
à l’animer” 46. Paul de Man also mentions Valéry’s fascination with the
spiral lines of shells which tightly combines the serpent line as a motif
also with the “objet du monde le plus ambigu” and its “forme passagère”
which in Valéry’s dialogue Eupalinos from 1923 – which keeps doing
the rounds among architects – serves as it were as the touchstone for
the ideal creative human being (who, nota bene, is an architect) 47.
Paul de Man’s warning against the attempt to discern in these “figures
imaginaires” – “créées[s] à demi-conscient” 48 any “symbole oublié” 49
is in fact remarkable in two way s: on the one hand, it shows his
criticism of the of metaphor as the fundamental trope in poetics, since
a metaphoric reading would be the prerequisite to reading a symbolic
meaning in the snake-like line that transcends the concrete context, in
which it appears as marginalia. The line would have accordingly been
transferred by Valéry into the sculptural work of his photographed pose.
Paul de Man’s reading strategy, consisting in uncovering a movement
of inescapable self-deconstruction inherent in literary texts, seems at
any rate to have been worked out in his exploration of the texts of the
symbolists. In his postdoctoral Essay on Symbolism (about 1960) bears
witness to this 50. As an alternative to the metaphorical interpretation of
the snake-like line, he proposes understanding it as the first reflection
of the semi-conscious flow of ideas (“l’écoulement quotidien de ses
idées”) 51 which already foreshadows the logic of his later prioritisation
of metonymy over metaphor. Such a reading ascribes great importance
to the constellation of a text and consequently to the syntagmatic
level in the logic of production and, accordingly, also for the analysis
of literary performance and rhetoric – an idea not too removed
46 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxii.
47 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xiv; as well as Paul Valéry,
« Eupalinos » [1923], Œuvres, II, Paris 1960, 77-147, 115 a. 119.
48 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxiii.
49 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxvii.
50 Paul de Man, «Postdoctoral Essay on Symbolism» (c. 1960), in: The Paul de Man Notebooks,
ed. by Martin McQuillan, Edinburgh 2014, 48-61.
51 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxiv. 10 Giambologna, The Rape of the Sabine Women (1574-82), Florence.

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 from the reflections, by both Valéry and Merleau-Ponty, on the
onomatopoetic potential of the paralinguistic gesticulating dimension
of literary language. However, if De Man whilst denying the symbolic
interpretation asks the question whether Valéry himself had ever seen
more than a “ligne vivante qui respire” 52 in the wavy line, his attitude
to this line seems to be as ambiguous as the line itself. Because in
calling it a life-line, in a seemingly terse comment, he does indeed
invoke an extensive web of traditions hardly any less comprehensive
and multifaceted than the one a metaphorical interpretation, which
he rejects, of the snake line would suggest. And yet this is another
tradition according to which this line does not have a symbolic
sign value but an indexical or, following Schelling and Coleridge
respectively, even a tautegorical sign function 53. The line means
resp. in this case shows or embodies what it itself is : free movement
at standstill and hence immediate expression of liveliness, where this
function of the sign is assigned to it by the concrete constellation of
which it is an element. It is part of the work on the text or picture,
which both in different ways take up the gestural communication in
their figures and figurations. This does not mean that throughout
these contexts, the line may not also acquire symbolic sign value, yet
it seems manifest that, to speak with Peirce, it is an index, and thus a
direct outlet and as such first witness to a sensory-motor movement.
Paul de Man outlines the range of its ambiguous impression : it can be
both the jotting down of ideas as well as the manifestation of a reflex
of a hand about to begin drawing :
Une sorte de vie autonome est en elle [la main] et la soudaineté de ses réflexes lui
fait parfois devancer les fluctuations de la pensée 54.

Thus repeated in the snake figures and snake lines drawn by Valéry
is the contrast of head and hand responsible also for the sinuosity of
the fold. This “jeu des figures”, wherein the ideal of the “Poésie pure”
is to materialise if at all possible, finds its emblematic expression in the
wavy lines. But into this figure of many names, one of which, namely
“ligne vivante”, Paul de Man mentions en passant, one concept of
the sign has left its mark – whose tradition is associated in particular
with one famous artist, who, though he did not establish it 55, at least
52 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxvii.
53 For an explanation and indication of sources, see Tim Kammasch, Politik der Ausnahme –
Die « Politique philosophique » von Jean-François Lyotard und ihr Widerstreit mit Kant,
Cambridge a. Mandelbachtal 2004, 296f.
54 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xviii.
55 See in this connection Aby Warburg, who in « Sandro Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ and
11 Giambologna, Mercury, 1580 Bronze, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. ‘Spring’ » (1889) following the publisher of the German edition of Alberti’s theoretical writings

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has influenced this tradition considerably : Leonardo da Vinci. For
Valéry, the name Da Vinci more than any other has stood for the
fruitful interaction of art and science and has occupied Valéry’s
own thinking over decades. He borrowed this name in several
publications of his own to give a title 56 to his exemplary reflexions
on creative thinking. He named him the exemplary combination of
theory and sensual observation, which he himself for a time called
“sensibilité intellectuelle” 57.
According to Leonardo’s dictum, quoted by de Man, each drawing
was seen first and foremost as “une forme qui serpente” 58. In addition
to the assertion that contemplating a successful work of art means
partaking of this impression of movement of the flowing line, this
saying also addresses the beginning of the genesis of a diségno. The
wavy line is a primary movement, both the hand’s motor reflex
and the impetus that precedes even the first conscious thought of
a concept and even stimulates the latter. This line bound for the
drawing proper is open-ended, a seeking, uncontrolled free movement
and as such the realisation of an Ars inveniendi, and hence the
realisation of a proficiency whose purpose first and foremost emerges
into the drawer’s consciousness during the process of realisation. In
this way, the line may also be the manifestation of a tacit knowledge of
the hand (“ce que sait la main”) – the hands nota bene of exactly those
artists who use them creatively and are able to imbue their works with
a vibrant, living expression. This is borne out not only through the
conspicuous occurrence of the line in Michelangelo and Da Vinci 59,
but also throughout the further stages in its history. The line, which
is understood as the knowledge of painters, also becomes a topic in
Merleau-Ponty and Henri Bergson, and again it is Leonardo who for
them opens up the tradition of the line, mainly via the article “Dessin”
in Jean-Gaspar-Félix Laché Ravaisson’s Dictionnaire de Pédagogie et
d’Instruction primaire (1887) 60. Because of its status as a sign, a figure
before the figure, as a first outline that opens up with a first polarity the
indifferent space of a white sheet of paper, representing for the further
on art (1879, Anton Springer) presents a passage in Alberti’s De Pictura (1435, Italian transl. 1436)
as a decisive piece of evidence that in artistic circles of the Italian Renaissance, the perception of
the snake line – which according to him was already antique – was widespread as an expression
of « transitory movements in hair and dress », see in this connection ibid., in Aby Warburg.
Works, publ. by Martin Treml, Sigrid Weigel, Perdita Ladwig, Berlin 2010, p. 46f.
56 Divers Essais sur Léonardo da Vinci de Paul Valéry commentés et annotés par lui même,
Paris 1931/33.
57 Paul Valéry, « Situation de Baudelaire » [1924], Œuvres, I, Paris 1957, 598-613, 611.
58 Les Dessins de Paul Valéry, publ. by Paul de Man, Paris 1948, xxviii.
59 Cf. Daniel Arasse, Leonardo da Vinci, Köln 1999, 18f.
60 Cf. Henri Bergson, « La Vie et l’Œuvre de Ravaisson » (1938), in:
– ., La Pensée et le Mouvant. Essais et Conférences (1938), Paris 2013, 253-291, 264-266. 12 Edward Steichen, Balzac, 1891-97, Auguste Rodin, Plaster, Musée d‘Orsay, Paris.

138
 design and creation something like the transcendental condition of
its possibility, the line is simultaneously denied time and again its
own reality, and not only by the Impressionists either 61. The serpent
line, whether truly existing or only contained latently in the gesture
of the visible, is regarded as the transition of the Euclidean point to
the dimension of the manifest, as first expansion, but on the other
hand, for Merleau-Ponty, also as a first difference which in its bipolar
oscillation disturbs the homogenous emptiness of the white sheet of
paper. For Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, it connects metaphysics and
painting and elevates the latter, in Valéry’s view as well, to the status
of a philosophy.
The movement of the line throughout the treatises, novels and letters
of artists and writers wanders from one famous name to another:
it slithers in Schiller’s letters-tracts to Körner about the concept of
beauty and, because it is impossible to pinpoint where it changes
direction, is declared the line of freedom 62. Following this free line,
not in chronological order, some more examples : Laurence Sterne, in
his Tristram Shandy (1759) [fig 5] 63, uses all kinds of capricious line
movements to illustrate the narrative arches of the various volumes
of the novel. They foreground – not without irony – the semantic
dimension of the narrative forms implicit in the reading process
itself. Such gimmicks with the line may be understood as allusions
and one text that might possibly serve as reference text is a work that
appeared six years before Sterne’s publication of the first version of
Tristram Shandy and which was also published in London. In 1753,
in his Analysis of Beauty, the artist William Hogarth dedicated
a comprehensive essay to the “serpentine line”. On its frontispiece
[fig 6 & 7], a small snake coils inside the perfect platonic body of a
triangle, as if under glass, and which figures as the emblem of the ‘Line
of Grace’ celebrated by Hogarth. The ‘Line of Grace’ differs from the
‘Line of Beauty’ in that, although like the latter it is similarly “bent
two different ways”, yet it also features – as may be seen in the example
in the depiction of different horns (N° 57 a. 58) at the lower edge of
the second of the plates added to the book [fig 8] – a double twist:
“twisted round, at the same time that it was bent two ways” 64. Thus
according to Hogarth, the ‘serpentine line’ reflects the way muscles

61 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit [1961], Paris 1964, 72-74

62 Friedrich Schiller, letter dated 23 February 1793, in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 8 :
Philosophische Schriften, Berlin 2005, 648-666, 664.
63 Laurence Sterne, Leben und Ansichten von Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen. Translated
13 Leonardo da Vinci, Tower of four Staircases (Ms. B, Fol. 47r. Paris, Institute de France), into German and published by Michael Walter, Frankfurt/M. 2006, 543.
in : Daniel Arasse, Leonardo da Vinci, Cologne 1997, 166. 64 William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty (1753), ed. by Ronald Paulson, New Haven/London 1997, 50f.

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wind themselves around the bones of humans 65. In terms of the An observation of Valéry’s – which can be linked to the principle
psychology of perception, Hogarth explains the effect of liveliness in of “harmony of opposites” embodied by the snake line – may tempt
paintings by means of an observer’s eye movement that corresponds to us to rather different urban consequences of the architectonic design
a wavy line. This approach casts its shadow well into the 20th century and structuring of our fields of action and movement. The reflections
and found support for example with the proponents of the Weimar concern a stroll in Paris (“J’étais sorti de chez moi...”) 70, which are
Bauhaus, among them Paul Klee 66 through whose manuscript for the recorded in his Fragments des Mémoires d’un Poème (1937). Nothing
first lecture series in 1921/22 meanders the evidence of his reflexions is known about the trajectory of this walk except that it took the poet
on lines [fig 9] 67. from his home, at the time at 40 Rue de Villejuste (nowadays Rue Paul
Valéry) 71, unexpectedly to the Seine. For Valéry, this walk is remarkable
In Rodin’s conversations about art, edited by Paul Gsell in 1911, because while walking, he was gripped by two opposing rhythms, both
the artist invokes another explanation for the semblance of movement originating outside of him and which he thought would probably have
of static works in painting or architecture. This could also serve as inspired a musician to a composition, yet this made Valéry conscious
explanation for the “Figura Serpentinata” in the sculptures of Giam- of the fact that walking often resulted in an increased production of
bologna [fig 10 & 11] for example. In any case, this interpretation ideas (“...j’observai que la marche m’entretient souvent dans une vive
assimilates the moment of bipolarity, which is the form-cause of the production d’idées”) 72. The passage focused on here does not give any
figure, as well as ‘Variety’, a characteristic that Hogarth assigned to tangible indication as to the architecture that might have prompted
the snake line as a by-line in the frontispiece, so to speak. According the rhythm of Valéry’s gait. His walk led him through the 16th
to Rodin, the simultaneousness of the non-simultaneous supplies the arrondissement (‘cleaned up’ since Haussmann) : the façades of the
grace of movement in a work of art. This may be visualised using perimeter block development are not overly ornamented, but they possess
his sculpture of Balzac [fig 12] by way of example. The various texture and, as an ensemble, they unite in a restrained interplay both
body parts and clothes are in positions they both cannot actually repetition and difference, in a way that is not particularly striking but
occupy at the same moment : the coat with its momentum more or which can be experienced en passant as rhythm-inducing. Yet Valéry’s
less hints at a movement that the body itself does not perform (any remarks do not constitute any model at all for an urban ensemble that
more). Merleau-Ponty, who quotes from these talks by Rodin, sums could have an enlivening effect and that could inspire thoughts on
up these remarks in the principle of “the coincidence of what does not the basis of perception. Yet at least the text communicates as much as
belong together” 68. There are faint echoes here of Heraclites’s principle Valéry experienced on his walk : it might provide the impetus for an
of ‘palintonic harmony’ (B51), i.e. the balance or unity of opposites aesthetics of the invisible or of the latent – which relies on architecture’s
which he describes using the bow and the lyre and whose divergent potential of influencing in a vitalising manner the primary sensory-
forces enable the vibration of the strings and, in the case of the latter, motor background perception by addressing its diacritic structure
make the beginning of poetry possible. Implementing this thought in subliminally by means of the harmonious joining of opposites. This
the design of space in the double spiral staircases 69 of Leonardo Da paralinguistic, gestural level of spatial constellation is where, for Valéry,
Vinci [fig 13], let alone in his quadruple staircase tower, will appear the architecture of language and the language of architecture converge :
as all too literal a transposition of the movement of the snake line
resp. of the “Figura Serpentinata”, as it can be experienced in painting ... que cette sorte de fonction quantitative pouvait aussi bien être satisfaite par
and sculpture, although these realisations not only make available the l’émission d’un certain rythme que par des figures verbales ou des signes quel-
optical but also the corporeal-kinaesthetic qualities of the serpent line. conques ; et qu’il y avait donc un moment de mon fonctionnement au point duquel
65 William Hogarth, op cit. [1753], 53. idées, rythmes, images, souvenirs ou inventions n’étaient que des équivalents 73.
66 Cf. Regine Bonnefoit, Die Linientheorien von Paul Klee, Petersberg 2009, 85f.
67 Paul Klee, Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre. Facsimile edition of the original manuscript
of Paul Klee’s first lecture series at the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1921/22, publ. by Jürgen
Glaesemer, Basel 1999, 8-9, 13. 70 Paul Valéry, « Fragments des Mémoires d’un Poème » [1937], Œuvres, I, Paris 1957,
68 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit [1961], Paris 1964, 78f.; see in this connection 1464-1491, 1474.
Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Frankfurt/M., 262f. 71 Cf. Denis Bertholet, Paul Valéry. Die Biographie, Berlin 2011, 516.
69 Cf. Ms. B, Fol. 47r. Paris, Institute de France, in: Daniel Arasse, Leonardo da Vinci, 72 Paul Valéry, op cit. [1937], 1474f.
Köln 1997, 166. 73 Paul Valéry, op cit. [1937], 1475.

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