Construire jusqu’au noir : le Moi de Valéry entre l’Introduction et Note et digression

The Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci (1894) is one of the clearest expositions of Valéry’s intellectual method, devoted to construction through order and “clarté”. If applied to the Self, it gives place to a solid construction which does without any biographic determination, felt as hazardous. Valéry conceives the Self as a system that is prior to events and that generates the activity of thinking, stating a cognitive typology of personal identity. However, this solidity seems to be troubled in Note et digression (1919), a text in which Valéry explores the difficulties and the “loss” of consciousness. Actually, we underline how this loss, far from being accidental, represents an obliged stage in the self-reflection of consciousness. The most solid personal construction hosts impersonality at its interior, revealing the troubling nature of Valéry’s position.