Écarts léonardiens de Paul Valéry: l’esprit sensible

Abstract

Demonstrating the importance of the circumstantial writings by Paul Valéry, the present essay points out his very first “commission” on Leonardo da Vinci as emblematic of a new sensitive philosophical reflexiveness. In fact, Valéry kept returning to the great renaissance phenomenon of Leonardo, in his twisted Introduction à la Méthode de Léonard de Vinci (1894), rewritten some 25 years later with Note et digression (1919), as well in his staging of philosophers and artists in Léonard et les philosophes (1929). The dislocations taking place within these texts outline an emphasis on the sensible, which remained almost hidden in Valéry’s well-known promotion of the spirit in art.