PAUL VALÉRY AND POÏETICS: REFLECTIONS ON THE ACT OF CREATION THROUGH THE CAHIERS
PAUL VALÉRY AND POÏETICS: REFLECTIONS ON THE ACT OF CREATION THROUGH THE CAHIERS

Summary/Abstract: "This paper examines the poietic dimension of Paul Valéry’s Cahiers as a unique, radical engagement with the creative process. Unlike Romantic notions that view creation as a sudden inspiration, Valéry frames it as intellectual labor—methodical, conscious, and rooted in repetition, doubt, and mental discipline. Written daily over five decades, the Cahiers are not personal diaries but a dynamic space where thought is observed, tested, and shaped through continuous writing. Valéry transforms the act of writing into a cognitive instrument: not simply to express thought, but to generate it.Through an introspective and analytical lens, Valéry builds a theory of creation that transcends literature and enters a transdisciplinary dialogue with science, philosophy, and the arts. His conception of poïétique—understood as the study of the conditions of making—foregrounds the embodied, rhythmic, and fragmentary nature of thinking in motion. This anticipates contemporary approaches in embodied cognition, genetic criticism, and process aesthetics.Valéry’s poietic practice reflects a shift from product-oriented creativity to process-oriented awareness. He offers not only a theory of how creation emerges but an ethics of self-observation and intellectual rigor. Thinking, for Valéry, becomes a form of internal craftsmanship—an act of becoming rather than merely producing.Ultimately, this paper argues that the Cahiers represent both a philosophical and practical contribution to our understanding of creation: a lifelong experiment in writing-as-thinking that remains highly relevant in today’s debates on creativity, subjectivity, and the human place in increasingly automated systems of cultural production."

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