A possible reading of “The graveyard by the sea”, by Paul Valéry

Abstract

Symbolism took place in a great carrefour, a time when strong currents and literary movements were competing for space in newspapers, publications, as well as in the ideas of greater authority. Baudelaire is the one who guides the beginning of a new era, the modernity. The great symbolist poets sought to achieve the pure poetry, a poetry that was not distorted neither by the outside nor by the interior of the poet. Symbols and high intellectual work marked this literature and the poet of the Mediterranean, Paul Valéry. This paper aims to locate Valéry in his time and literary period, as well as to make a brief reading of his great poem Le Cimetière Marin and discuss the poetry of the writer. For this, we rely on the theoretical deepening and analysis of scholars on the subject, such as Edmund Wilson, João Alexandre Barbosa, Machado Leite, Todorov, among others.