Paul Valéry Biography

Paul Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher whose broad interests positioned him as a polymath. While best known as a poet and sometimes considered the last of the French Symbolists, his output is sparse yet immensely influential. Following a profound existential crisis that shaped his career, he emerged after two decades of silence in 1917 with a monumental work that secured his fame and is regarded as a pinnacle of 20th-century French poetry.