Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. Nominated twelve times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he did not begin writing full-time until he was nearly 50 years old, having worked secretarial and administrative jobs for the majority of his life. A hugely popular public speaker and intellectual figure during his day, Valéry is now best known for his intellectual diary, the Cahiers, and his poetry, which influenced contemporaries and later luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, John Ashbery, and James Merrill.
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