Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Paul Ryan

Titel

Paul Valery: Visual Perception and an Aesthetics of Landscape Space

Ist Teil von

• Australian journal of French studies, 2008-01, Vol.45 (1), p.43-58

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Valery's celebrated essay "Inspirations mediterraneennes", in which he pays poetic homage to his native port of Sete, the "theatre" of light, colour and space that was his "site originel" (OE, I, 1084),1 is unambiguous as to the significance of this propitious natural context in terms of his visual consciousness and, equally, his beginnings as a writer and painter. Out of the unrealized ambition of a maritime vocation emerged the dual creative energy that not only found expression in writing but also kindled Valery's inherent artistic impulses, as he states in the essay: "Il fallait bien [ ] deriver cette passion marine malheureuse vers les lettres ou vers la peinture". Recent research has demonstrated that this latter mode of artistic expression, which, not unlike the poetry, strongly bears the hallmarks of the maritime experience, forms an integral dimension of Valery's creativity. Moreover, it is only since a substantial quantity of unpublished material has recently become available for consultation that one can take stock of the true extent of the writer's artistic output. This article aims firstly to examine the extensive scientific investigations into visual space - which Val ry conceived empirically in terms of distance, expanse and the relative proportions of topological surfaces, lines and features -, and secondly the representation of landscape in the writer's prodigious repertoire of drawings and watercolours that undoubtedly constitute the pictorial expression of such perceptual phenomena. It is in this conflation of, on the one hand, theories of visual perception and, on the other, artistic practice that one can arrive at an aesthetics of external space and landscape.